Application and experience of thermal compositional reservoir simulation in the emlichheim oilfield

摘要

For more than 50 years the annual plateau production of the Emlichheim oilfield is maintained at about 150,000 t crude per year (1.05 MMstb/y). During its long production life, oil properties turned out to be the largest challenge to overcome, i.e. the high in-situ oil viscosity is governing the type and the efficiency of the applied recovery mechanism. Therefore the first thermal recovery (hot water injection) started in 1967 and since 1981 to date, steam injection was chosen to be the major flooding mechanism to overcome the immobile oil. Integrated project planning processes were mandatory due to the application of thermal enhanced oil recovery. Therefore, already in the mid 70s reservoir simulation was introduced as a tool to optimize steam flooding projects. The effort mainly focussed on optimizing the technical and economical aspects of such projects. The fast growing developments of computer hard- and software enable the operational units to perform reservoir simulation thermselves. This varies from performing history matches on the reservoir production parameters to the direct combination of up-to-date drilling and production techniques with the use of multi-component PVT simulation. The strategic usage of the reservoir simulation enables the identification of possible future steam injection projects for the Emlichheim oilfield. The simulation can be used as a tool to develop possible strategies for producing smaller areas within the field, which are not yet considered to be good candidates for steam injection. This paper provides besides a brief overview of the fields' development and production history, an outline of the performed reservoir simulation studies.However, not only will the focus be on the usage of thermal reservoir simulation in the Emlichheim oilfield, it will also include related risks and limits of this method.