Competition between Steamdrive and Waterdrive for the Recovery of Low ViscosityOils

摘要

The main objective of the project was to critically evaluate an earliersuggestion by Blevins (1984) stating that steamflooding, which is applied routinely to the recovery of heavy oil can also be applied economically to the recovery of medium recovery oil, i.e., can compete with waterflooding. In the project the original emphasis was on sweep enhancement owing to a more favorable effective mobility ratio when a distillable oil bank is present. During the project this aspect was studied in a somewhat broader context by also considering other factors that contribute to a sweep enhancement such as capillary effects, heating of the fluid zone and heat exchange effects with cap and baserock.