Study of reservoir properties and operational parameters influencing in the steam assisted gravity drainage process in heavy oil reservoirs by numerical simulation

Abstract

This study was originally aimed at suggesting a two-dimensional program for the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process based on the correlations proposed by Heidari and Pooladi, using the MATLAB software. In fact, the work presented by Chung and Butler was used as the basis for this study. Since the steam chamber development process and the SAGD production performance are functions of reservoir properties and operational parameters, the new model is capable of analyzing the effects of parameters such as height variation at constant length, length variation at constant height, permeability variation, thermal diffusivity coefficient variation and well location on the production rate and the oil recovery among which, the most important one is the thermal diffusivity coefficient analysis. To investigate the accuracy and authenticity of the model outcomes, they were compared with the results obtained by Chung and Butler. The privilege of this method over that proposed by Heidari and Pooladi lies in its ability to investigate the effect of thermal diffusivity coefficient on recovery and analyzing the effect of temperature distribution changes on thickness diffusivity. Based on the observations, results reveal that the proposed model gives more accurate predictions compared to the old model proposed by Chung & Butler.

Keywords

Simulation / Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) / Heat profile / Thermal diffusivity coefficient / Bitumen recovery

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