SPE 53983
Integrated Laboratory Field Application for Thermal Recovery Process
Elias Lopez *, Luis Rojas *, Tomas Mata *, Humberto Mendoza *, Abrahan Briñez *, PDVSA Exploration y Production.*
SPE Members
Copyright 1999, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 1999 SPE Latin American and Caribbean
Petroleum Engineering Conference held in Caracas, Venezuela, 21–23 April 1999.
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Abstract
The Bolívar Coast Heavy Oil Fields (Tía Juana,
Lagunillas and Bachaquero), located at the eastern
onshore area of Maracaibo Lake, Western Venezuela,
contain some 37 billion barrels of Oil Originally In Place.
The recovery from these three giant fields is 5.5 billions
(15% STOOIP), and is expected to reach 7.7 billions
(21% STOOIP) under current primary recovery method
(Cyclic Steam Injection).
It has been estimated that an additional 39% of STOOIP
in potential areas for steamflooding could be recovered
by this process. Previous conceptual studies, and field
projects in Bolivar coast area has showed high recovery
factor and marginal economics. Those project were
conducted under conventional application of technology.
In the last 10 years, technology has evolved in such a
way that monitoring can be improved and the
performance enhanced for secondary recovery process.
These new technologies, such as 4D seismic,
Tomography, fiber optic, new approach for steam
generation etc., have been tested in different steamflood
projects with high impact in the added value.
PDVSA E&P has adopted a new approach to carry out
technological projects under the philosophy of the
Integrated Field Laboratories. This concept is a wider
definition of a Pilot Test, since it encompasses the ideas
of evaluating a secondary recovery process and
performing the corresponding reservoir management.
The reservoir management includes the evaluation of
different technologies for monitoring and control and the
simulation and visualization of the process itself, so
injected fluid fronts can be tracked down the reservoir.
This will allow the creation of an integrated data base
and the use of intelligent information systems in order to
predict changes and perform decision analysis. The
lesson Learned in this Lab will help us to optimize and
become marginal projects into profitable ones.
This paper presented the results obtain up to date in the
integrated field laboratory that for heavy oil is conducted
in W-6 area of Lagunillas Field in the Bolivar coast.
INTRODUCTION
In the Bolívar Coast Field, PDVSA possesses
36,740 MMSTB of heavy oil initially in place and
reserves in the order of 7,723 MMSTB (21 % of OOIP),
out of which only 2,246 MMSTB (6.1 % of OOIP) are
considered remaining under current exploitation
schemes.
During the developing of such reserves, several
tests have been carried out. Of them, Cyclic Steam
Stimulation (CSS) has been the one with the most
economic success. From 1978 to 1988, a pilot test on
Steam Flooding (SF) was conducted in the M6 thermal
project of the Tia Juana Field. Such test was considered
successful but it was suspended due to market
conditions.
Recent studies show that our reserves will
increase in 13,3 MMMSTB via SF with production rates
of up to 1000 MSTB/D. This number is 35% of STOOIP.
This gathered with the estimated 25% recovery with
CSS gives an approximately 60% recovery for the whole
BCF. Remaining reserves under CSS amount only to 2,5
MMMSTB (7% of STOOIP).
On the other hand, when comparing with what
has been reported for other SF fields, their expected
rates and recoveries are much higher current recovery
2 Lopez, Rojas, Mata, Mendoza, Briñez.
figures (figure 1). The key factor for their results is the
integration of different technologies that, by monitoring
the effect of steam in the reservoir, allow managing the
use of heat and hence optimizing the recovery of oil.
CONCEPT OF LABORATORY
PDVSA has performed several pilot tests in
order to test different exploitation technologies. Among
them, for heavy oil, it is included the pilot projects in the
Zuata and Hamaca areas of the Orinoco Belt, and the
SAGD applications in the Tia Juana Field.
The concept of a Integrated Field Lab (IFL)
involves
1. Identification of key processes and technologies for
the selective exploitation of the resource basis of
light, medium and heavy oils, and whose massive
application allows to increase the recovery factors in
10% of the OOIP in the next five years.
2. Reduce the cycle for adopting, evaluating, and
transferring and massive using technologies
3. Provide integrated strategies for reservoir
exploitation for reservoir/fields in order to maximize
the created valued for the corporation.
With this background, the development of an IFL
of mature heavy oil fields is proposed in the W6 thermal
project of the Lagunillas Field in order to understand the
effect of SF and gather and integrate the information
obtained with different monitoring techniques (figure 2).
The information obtained with this IFL will provide
guidelines for the development of SF projects at large
scale in the heavy oil fields of BCF.
This is one of the three IFL that PDVSA has
planned for the period 1998-2000. The other two are for
light oils. One to understand the ASP process and the
other to understand the WAG process.
DESCRIPTION OF THE IFL
Philosophy and strategy of the IFL
The IFL’s are backed-up by the following
philosophy:
1. - Centralize efforts.
This implies that the test of the exploitation
process, the monitoring program and the application of
information technologies to understand the process will
be performed in the Lab.
2. - Perform the study in a small area of the reservoir,
SPE 53983
which in turn is a representative fraction of OOIP.
This will allow performing the entire test in a
relative small area of the field, however representative of
the reservoir general conditions. This will allow
maintaining control of the activities and will illustrate the
application of the process at a large scale.
3. - Accelerate technology transfer.
This will be achieved since integrated teams
working together with experts on the studied processes
will perform activities. The flow of ideas that this effort
will generate will train our personnel and accelerate the
massive use of technologies at all levels of our
exploitation.
4. - Complement of technologies.
Several technologies for monitoring will be
tested, providing an efficient way of determining how
these technologies complement each other (figure 2). It
is expected that with this evaluation, it will be understood
how these different technologies complement, which in
turn will help in planning monitoring at field scale.
5. - Uncertainty reduction.
The IFL will allow to understand the process and
to find the best practices for monitoring it in a small area
as well as to define detailed models of the lab area, so
uncertainties, both operational and geological, are
reduced.
6. - Quantification of effort needed for large field
application.
The IFL will provide knowledge to identify
activities needed to apply the exploitation processes, the
required monitoring technologies and so it will be known
the activities needed for commercial applications.
7. - Support decision making with the largest technical
support.
The information obtained from monitoring and gathered
in data bases, as well as the experience obtained from
the IFL, will provide the necessary technical base for the
interpretation of the test and support modifications and
extensions of it.
8. - Personnel training
The IFL’s will provide a place for on the job training,
which will allow workers to apply similar processes
outside them.
SPE 53983 Integrated Laboratory Field Application for Thermal Recovery Process
Geographic Location
The mature heavy oil IFL is located on the
blocks W5 and W6 of the Lagunillas Field. There, 45
wells, at a spacement of 133 m, form the W6 thermal
project and 29 of those wells will be involved in the Lab
(Figure 3).
Those 29 wells conform, on one hand, three
concentric rings of wells and, on the other, seven
hexagons, each as a seven-spot pattern. The pilot is
configured as a normal project, i.e. injectors in the center
and producer surrounding them. Two new producers and
nine observation wells were drilled sequence for 1998.
Also some of these wells, both for production and
injection, have to be worked over.
To feed steam to the project, the W6 steam plant
is being expanded and 2 boilers and 1000 tons of steam
will be available for the beginning of the project. Further
expansion are planned but not executed yet.
MONITORING
The monitoring proposed for the IFL pursues
two objectives:
The first objective is to understand the process
that is being evaluated, which has implications both in
surface and reservoir level. At surface, production data it
is desired to capture production and injection data, At
reservoir level, it is desired to follow up the steam fronts
in order to determine which sands have been swept and
which have not and perform heat management. This will
allow predicting the modifications needed. Similar
modifications will be performed later on for larger
applications.
The second objective is to evaluate different
monitoring technologies, evaluate the type of information
they provide, determine how they complement each
other and determine the optimum way to be applied at
field level.
For the IFL planned for W6, it is planned the
following monitoring:
Observation Wells
Nine observation wells were drilled to monitor
the advance of the steam front. Their completion was
only a cemented casing trough which temperature fiber
optic is set. One core and one high frequency VSP were
taken. Also they served either as receptors or sources
for the interwell tomography.
In these wells the following logs were taken:
3
1. DLL/MSFL/GR/SP
2. LDL/CN/GR/CAL
3. MAC/GR
4. RCI/GR
5. VSP
6. SWC or MSCT
In two of these wells core will be taken and in
five of them sidewall samples for production
geochemistry. Some results from these wells will be
shown in the Results section.
Seismic monitoring (4D seismic)
In order to monitor the advance of the steam
(and hence temperature) fronts, a pilot project on 4D
seismic is proposed within the IFL in order to determine
the feasibility of monitoring the SF projects PDVSA E&P
has in its resource basis (figure 4).
In this case, the object is to take “photos” of the
reservoir before and after performing the SF process
and determine the dynamic characteristics of steam in
the reservoir. Since the geometry of the reservoir should
not change during different surveys, the difference
between two consecutive seismic surveys should tell the
changes in fluids, due to the dependence between
velocity of seismic waves with temperature, porosity,
type of fluids, etc.
In the W6 IFL there are 4 seismic surveys
projected: the one previous to the SF has been already
taken (figure 5) and the other three, one right after the
beginning of SF to assure repeatability and the other two
8 and 16 months after the beginning of injection.
Some results from seismic will be shown in the
Results section.
Production Data
A follow up of the produced and injected fluids in
order to determine the rates of oil and water, quantity
and quality of steam injected and acid gases (H 2S).
Production Geochemistry
This technique is recommended since it is
needed to account for reserves produced from each
interval. Our injector wells will inject selectively while the
producers are open hole gravel pack.
The samples needed for this task were obtained
from the observers and distributed all over the different
intervals of the oil column and test have been conducted
4 Lopez, Rojas, Mata, Mendoza, Briñez.
Some results from these wells will be shown in
the Results section.
INTERWELL TOMOGRAPHY
This technique allows studying the seismic
response of the 2-D space between two wells. In one of
the wells the source is placed and the receivers in the
other. Interwell tomography processes seismic signal
from not destructive sources and allows resolutions up to
10 feet, solving some of the resolution processes the
seismic might have. Because of this, pressure barriers or
faults not seen in seismic can be observed with this
technique.
Observation wells were used to place sources
and receivers for our particular application and will be
tested to track the steam front.
Some results from interwell tomography will be
shown in the Results section.
.
SIMULATION AND VISUALIZATION
Simulation and visualization form part of the
understanding and monitoring of the process (figure 6),
but due to their computational nature, they are
considered separately.
Since they form part of the IFL, they must be
framed by its objectives, so they have two goals: one
short term or local goal and the other long term or global
goal.
At local level, there is interest in understanding
the SF process. At global level, the interest is to spread
this knowledge trough the organization.
Local Level
At local level, the following aspects must be
modeled:
History Match
The objective is to determine, based on the
geologic model, fluid description and production and
injection history the current reservoir conditions. The
process and effects that have affected the reservoir life
must be represented in the simulation, and for the W6
case, the following will be considered:
1. Selective injection.
2. Compaction.
3. Differential drainage
SPE 53983
4. Foamy oil effects and PVT
5. Gridding effects.
6. Response of different wells or patterns.
SF Base case and Real Effects of the Process
In this phase, the different production SF
mechanisms are to be simulated, in order to understand
their effects in the pilot and extrapolate to larger areas.
Also some exploitation schemes have to be modeled.
Among these effects and schemes are:
1. Lowering of residual oil saturation with temperature.
2. Sand intrusion.
3. Heat losses in the tubing and surrounding layers.
4. Shale intercalation.
5. Selective steam injection.
6. Multiple injectors.
Project Modification
As the W6 IFL is planned, vertical wells at 11
acres spacement is considered. However other schemes
could be considered, based on steam performance. This
implies, on one hand add new injectors or producers to
the model, in order to swept or produce areas non
contacted by steam, and on the other to change the
injection profiles to delay steam irruption and extend the
economic life of the project. The following are
considered:
1. Additional wells (vertical, horizontal)
2. Additives
3. Water alternated steam injection.
4. Hot water flooding.
Heat Management
Simulation and visualization are to show how
steam behaves in the reservoir, which areas are swept
and which are not, so proper actions are taken to
optimize the use of this resource.
Numerical simulations results from several integrated
field studies indicated that proper reservoir management
practices such as, reservoir monitoring, heat
management, and reservoir characterization can
improve final recovery, and still being environment
friendly. In steamflood projects, proper knowledge of
fluid intake at the injectors and fluid outcome at the
producers are important parameters to locate properly
the steam injection and pumping systems, improving
reservoir recovery at optimum costs.
Pilot Interpretation
SPE 53983 Integrated Laboratory Field Application for Thermal Recovery Process
Simulation and its integration with other source
of data must allow interpreting the IFL, in particular heat
balance and fluid migration.
Global Level
At the global level, the interest is to transmit to
the organization the lessons learned in the IFL. At this
point, the following aspects are to considered:
1. Identification of key parameters to new applications.
2. Automation issues.
3. Training
4. Scaling from fine to coarse models.
Data Collection and Documentation
This approach will require two basic columns,
which will allow to evaluate and plan future projects: data
collection and documentation.
Existing and new data have to be integrated to
update models and to obtain information to determine
process applicability. Among this data:
1. Well data.
2. Geology/ seismic.
3. Fluids.
4. Petrophysics.
To capture this data, a SCADA system is being
set. The 24 producers, the 7 injectors, the 9 observers
and the flow station will be automated.
Documentation must not only show the results
and the logic to obtain them but also the different
situations toward future developments. The idea is that,
since the IFL will be a process school, the personnel at
charge may have the pilot as reference. Documentation
must include:
1. Project history.
2. Bottle necks and how they were solved.
3. Communication problems (between team members
and between software)
4. Activity report.
5. Conflictive data and interpretation.
LESSONS to LEARN
These lessons come from three different ways:
The first one is about the process: how it is applied and
how it must be applied in the field for a high economical
value. This has to do with all the operational aspects of
the process and how the process is modeled.
5
The second way is about monitoring.
One lesson to learn is what the monitoring provides, how
it produces data and how data from different sources
can be integrated for heat and field management
Another lesson is that monitoring of this test is going to
be redundant in order to study if data proceeding from
one source can be obtained indirectly from some others.
The third way is integration and field application. The
results of the Lab must show how the process and the
monitoring couple and how this leads to a successful
field development. The IFL is not about doing some test
but rather how those test increase the value of the
corporation. Results must tell the effort needed for the
10% production in 5 years, which is the IFL main
objective (figure 7).
FIELD APPROACH
The field approach has four aspects:
The first one is to expand the IFL to neighboring patters
to take advantage of the infrastructure developed for the
IFL. This will also allow to benefit from the fact the IFL
area is still warm and hence injectivity will be easier.
The second aspect is to develop under SF other areas of
the field. In most areas, well spacement is 231 m, so an
infill drilling campaign is needed to have the same well
distance than the IFL. Moreover, differential depletion is
a constant trough many areas of the Bolivar Coast.
Plans call for this campaign to be performed to take
advantage of this situation and deplete the
corresponding sands via steam cycling.
This procedure will impact economics positively since on
one hand, new wells with CSS will have high production
rate because their main target are sands with low level
of depletion and on the other, those wells will be used for
the steam drive process.
The third aspect is to apply the appropriated monitoring,
now at the field level, to obtain the best use of heat and
increment the value of the corporation.
The forth is to apply knowledge management to maintain
the learned lessons in the corporation. Reports on the
different activities are being written and kept both in the
building library and the company Intranet. Data must be
kept so future analysis and modeling can be performed.
6 Lopez, Rojas, Mata, Mendoza, Briñez. SPE 53983

RESULTS FIGURES

Observation Wells: All of these wells have been logged

and the interpretation has been integrated to the one of 350
seismic. Some of the logs are in figure 8 300 BACHAQUERO LAGUNA LAGUNILLAS

Qo (MSTB/D)
250
200 22% 16%
FR
Seismic: As said before, the base run was taken at the 150 105
87 25%
beginning of 1998 and it is being processed and 100

interpreted, thanks to a high resolution VSP taken in one 50

0
15

of the observers. OOIP 10.1 MMMSTB

R. RES 0.5 MMMSTB
OOIP 9.8 MMMSTB
R. RES 0.6 MMMSTB
OOIP 5.3 MMMSTB
R. RES 0.2
305
MMMSTB
350
300
TIA JUANA PESADO DURI K. RIVER
As for temperature monitoring, it has shown areas in

Qo (MSTB/D)
250
PROD.
which the response can only be associated with the 200 25%
previous steam cycling (figure 9). For reservoir 150 98
95
100 60%
description, it allows to see the different features of the 50 66%
reservoir in a very high detail, in the vertical and 0
OOIP 10.8 MMMSTB OOIP 5.3 MMMSTB OOIP 2 MMMSTB
horizontal plane (figures 10 and 11). These integrated R. RES 0.5
MMMSTB
R. RES 2 MMMSTB R. RES 0.3 MMMSTB

with logs give us a conceptual geological model of the

area (figure 12).

Tomography: The tomography has been processed and

its results being interpreted since the response is very
weak, but this has been associated to either the
Figure 1. –. Benchmark of some field under steam flooding
unconsolidated sand or to the presence of gas pockets
and those from The Bolivar Coast under steam cycling.
in the reservoir (figure 13).

Geochemistry: Samples are being analyzed (figure 14).

Results will be used to allocate production to different
sand intervals, if a fingerprint is found.

Partial results indicate that samples from different sand AUTOMATION ENVIROMENTAL MONITORING

are different both in chromatography and statistically.

GEOCHEMESTRY SEISMIC

Automation: The injector and four of the producing wells. HEAT

Data from these wells is being sent, via radio to a remote MANAGEMENT
VSP
TOMOGRAPHY
location. SMART
WELLS

CONCLUSIONS
TEMP. OBSERVATION
WELLS
1. Any use of technology must be driven to increase MULTIPLE INJECTORS

the value of the corporation, because it must lead to

increase reserves and to cause cost reduction.
2. Integrated use of technologies is the key factor for
success, both for tests and for field applications.
3. The concept of IFL can be applied to prove any
exploitation process and to obtain the maximum of it.
Figure 2. – Massive technology to be applied in the IFL of W6
in which downhole assets are fully instrumented and
integrated to upper decision systems, such as numerical
reservoir simulators, project management desktop and
integrated reservoir management environments.

Acknowledgment

We thank PDVSA for permission to publish this paper.

SPE 53983 Integrated Laboratory Field Application for Thermal Recovery Process 7

INTEGRATED FIELD LABORATORY OVER STEAM FLOODING

W-6 PROJECT LAGUNILLAS FIELD
LOCATION MAP Cores
Geophysics 3D
IMPACTOPOTENCIAL ADICIONAL=
models
3.5 MBDRESERVAS REMANENTES=
15.0 MMBN.
Petrophysics
Estratigrafy

N
LG L G
AP AP
T-6 E

V-7 Feed-Back
T
EX
W-6 W-6

X-5

LEYEND
Producer
Observation
Injector
Water Well
Reservoir Visualizatión
W6 Steam Plant Simulation

Figure 3. – Location map of the IFL of W6 in the Lagunillas Figure 6 - Simulation and visualization of the process are key
Field. Shown the location also of producer, injectors and issues in reservoir management for a displacement process.
observation wells.
MBD
4D SEISMIC
2000 WHAT? ADDED
VALUE OF
HOW MUCH? TECHNOLOGY
ECONOMICS?
1500
HOW?

- = 1000 TECHNICAL
EFFORT

500 TRADITIONAL
ACTIVITY
BASE SHOOTING FOLLOW UP DIFFERENCE BASE
LEVEL
0
CHANGES IN THE SEISMIC RESPONSE DUE TO EVENTS
IN THE EXPLOITATION HISTORY OF THE RESERVOIR 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

Figure 4.- 4D seismic looks for differences between two seismic

shots and interpretates them as changes in the reservoir due to the
exploitation.
Figure 7.- Lessons to learn will include the effort needed to increase
reserves and production in similar fields to those where LIC’s are
applied.

RESERVOIR
RESERVOIR
•• Depth>
Depth>2600’
2600’
• Big amplitude
• Big amplitude
•• Soft
Softdipping
dipping
•• Sand
Sandcontinuity
continuity
•• ++200
200Hz
Hzof
ofresolution.
resolution.

Figure 5.- 3D seismic from W6.

8 Lopez, Rojas, Mata, Mendoza, Briñez. SPE 53983

Figure 8.- Logs from observation well LS-5117.

Figure 11.- Detail of 3D seismic in W-6.

100 m

Figure 9.- Current view from W6 seismic. Blue spots, where seismic Figure 12.- Conceptual geological model for W-6. When finished, it
velocity decreasas has been related to heat renmaining from previous will be used for simulation. However, it captures the complexity of
cycles. the distribution of channels.

500 m 500

Res.

1000

Figure 10.- Vertical view of seismic from W6. High resolution allows
to see 10 feet intervals.
SPE 53983 Integrated Laboratory Field Application for Thermal Recovery Process 9

Figure 13.- Current view of W-6 tomography.

LS-5119. Lagunillas
C23-3D/C29D (177) C30D/C29αβ (191) C29H(191)/C29D(177) C21+22/c27+c28 (218)

0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1,2 1,4 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1,2 0 0,5 1,5 2,5 3,5

2000

2100 A
A
2200 A

2300 B
C
2400
D
2500
D
2600
? ? ? ? D
D
2700
L
2800 L

La muestra a 2512’ no se graficó porque parece tener problemas experimentales. Para corroborar estos
resultados y los de la muestra a 2595’ se están haciendo mediciones por triplicado.

Figure 14.- Geochemestry from well LS-5119, one of the observers..