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Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is one of the technologies selected to economically increase the recovery factor from the very large accumulations of heavy oil found in the Orinoco Belt, Venezuela. This paper presents a geomechanical laboratory and field campaign to obtain the rock properties, estimate the in-situ stresses, and to evaluate t...
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... immersion test was performed for 48 hours. Figure 4 (Sandstone) indi- cated a low degree of superficial disintegration and chemical reactivity between the rock sample saturated with heavy oil and the fluids (deionaized water). The upper formation (shale) was affected by the immer- sion in water, indicating a higher potential of reactivity due to high concentration of expansible clay minerals (illite). ...
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Venezuela’s largest heavy-oil deposits are found primarily in the Faja del Orinoco Belt. These deposits exhibit a low production rate under the cold flow method. The objective of this study is to model the impact of steam injection on the fluid dynamics, geomechanics, and seismic attributes for the Faja del Orinoco steam-assisted gravity drainage p...
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... The dilation angles (g) values ranged from 0 up to 21°a t 1.2% of the total shear strain. The tests executed under elevated temperature were compared with triaxial campaign executed under laboratory temperatures and were previously published by Perdomo et al. (2010) using samples from sandstones and caprock shales. ...
Venezuela’s largest heavy-oil deposits are found primarily in the Faja del Orinoco Belt. These deposits exhibit a low production rate under the cold flow method. The objective of this study is to model the impact of steam injection on the fluid dynamics, geomechanics, and seismic attributes for the Faja del Orinoco steam-assisted gravity drainage pilot project. In order to make core testing more representative under this operation conditions, a new heating system
was developed to execute triaxial tests with heavy oil samples under elevated temperature and the results were used as input in a new thermo-poro-elastic–plastic coupled fluid flow and geomechanics simulator. Our simulation show that, after 8 years of steam injection, the temperature increased, reaching 280 �C around the injection well. In addition, oil saturation decreased from 0.803 to 0.13, pore pressures dropped to approximately 8.68 MPa, and the volumetric strain changes reached 0.00078 close to injector well. The
results also indicated that the effects of compressibility on cumulate oil production with thermo-hydromechanical coupling reached 35% more than without coupling in 8 years of steam stimulation. The cumulative steam-oil rate was approximately 2.70 for 100 tons of steam per day, with 0.203 9 106 m3 (1.28 mmstb) cumulative oil volume and 0.548 9 106 m3.
... Indeed, steam stimulation can reduce the effective stresses by varying the pore pressure, inducing oil sands to shear, generating compaction or surface dilation, reducing the strength of the formation around the steam chamber and occasionally causing in rock failure. To properly evaluate the impact of geomechanics on the SAGD process in the Faja del Orinoco study area, it was necessary to understand the rock properties and porepressure behavior, the stress state as well as the fracture gradient during steam injection to predict wellbore instability, design the casing shoe, correctly locate the well pairs and predict accurately the recovery factor as well as the volume of heavy oil that could be extracted in the studied field (Rabe et al. 2008, Perdomo et al. 2010. The purpose of this paper is to provide a fundamental geomechanical data set of the studied area to optimize and mitigate risks in SAGD projects elsewhere. ...
