Estudo da injeção contínua de vapor usando poços horizontais em reservatórios de óleo pesados

Abstract

The largest oil reserves in the world are heavy oil. In Brazil, most of the heavy oil reservoirs are in the Northeast Region. The exploitation of these reserves is a major challenge for the oil industry, due to the high viscosities that hinder their flow, consequently harming their production. In order to improve the recovery of this oil, advanced recovery methods have been developed. Steam injection is the most used thermal method in the industry, and its purpose is to transfer heat to the reservoir, thus increasing its temperature and consequently decreasing the viscosity of the oil, facilitating its flow to the producing well. In this work, analysis were performed on different configurations of injection wells and horizontal producers using continuous injection of steam. For the modeling of the fluid and the reservoir, the Winprop and Builder modules were used, and for the simulation the STARS module of the Computer Modeling Group (CMG). In the study, it was observed that the influence of the injection rate on the recovery factor, besides the physical properties of the reservoir, such as: pressure, temperature and oil saturation. The analysis showed that it is efficient to inject steam using horizontal wells in heavy oil reservoirs. Among the analyzed configurations, case 4 presented the best recovery factor 23%. It consists of 3 injector wells and 3 horizontal producer wells.