DEVELOPMENT OF SHALLOW VISCOUS OIL RESERVES IN NORTH SLOPE

North Slope of Alaska has huge oil deposits in heavy oil reservoirs such as Ugnu, West Sak and Shrader Bluff etc. The viscosity of the last two reservoir oils vary from {approx}30 cp to {approx}3000 cp and the amount in the range of 10-20 billion barrels. High oil viscosity and low formation strength impose problems to high recovery and well productivity. Water-alternate-gas injection processes can be effective for the lower viscosity end of these deposits in West Sak and Shrader Bluff. Several gas streams are available in the North Slope containing NGL and CO{sub 2} (a greenhouse gas). The goal of this research is to develop tools to find optimum solvent, injection schedule and well-architecture for a WAG process in North Slope shallow sand viscous oil reservoirs. Coreflood, quarter 5-spot study, compositional simulation, wettability, relative permeability study and streamline-based simulation were conducted in this project. 1D compositional simulation results agree reasonably well with those of the slim tube experiments. Injection of CO{sub 2}-NGL is preferable over that of PBG-NGL. MME is sensitive to pressure (in the range of 1300-1800 psi) for the injection of PBG-NGL, but not for CO{sub 2}-NGL. Three hydrocarbon phases form in this pressure range. As the mean thickness of the adsorbed organic layer on minerals increases, the oil-water contact angle increases. The adsorbed organic films left behind after extraction of oil by common aromatic solvents used in core studies, such as toluene and decalin, are thinner than those left behind by non-aromatic solvents, such as cyclohexane. The force of adhesion for minerals aged with just the asphaltene fraction is similar to that of the whole oil implying that asphaltenes are responsible for the mixed-wettability in this reservoir. A new relative permeability model for a four-phase, mixed-wet system has been proposed. A streamline module is developed which can be incorporated in an existing finite-difference based compositional simulator to model water flood, gas flood and WAG flood. Horizontal wells increase well deliverability over vertical wells, but sweep efficiency can decrease. The well performance depends on the well length, position, heterogeneity, and viscosity ratio. The productivity increase due to electromagnetic heating is a function of power intensity, flow rate, and frequency etc. The productivity of a well can be doubled by electromagnetic heating. A high-pressure quarter 5-spot model has been constructed to evaluate the sweep efficiency of miscible WAG floods. WAG displacement reduces bypassing compared to gas floods and improves oil recovery in cores. As the WAG ratio decreased and slug size increased, oil recovery increased. Oil was recovered faster with increased slug size and decreased WAG ratio in the simulations for field cases studied