• More by Author
• Comments
• Send to a Friend
• Print

The specialists met in the city upon Volga for the tenth time since 1997. Discussions about deep stimulation methods started when the Russian oil industry lived through difficult times. Late 1990s were marked by decline in hydrocarbons recovery. Then, the oil specialists understood that it was necessary to revive regular meetings and to recover bonds broken during transition to the the market economy. "Together, we need to help formations in a proper way to restore the energy loss," said the ROSING president about the conference's mission.

Recovery Factor for the Buzzword

The abbreviation for "recovery factor" was written across the screen as the main visual aid accompanying the report of the coryphaeus of the Russian oil recovery and production enhancement methods Nikolai Lisovskiy, the first deputy chairman of the Central Oil and Gas Field Development Commission, honorable academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and academician of the Mines Inspectorate.

This term - commonly known as "recovery" - ran through all reports made by producing companies and research institutes' representatives demonstrating close interconnection between theoretical research and practice. As Mr. Lisovsky noted, recovery factor is the most important indicator of field development efficiency and feasibility, and serves as a basis for assessment and solution for the problems related to oil recovery enhancement.

The scientist proposed to develop a unified approach to such key concepts as Recovery Stimulation Methods, Well Flow Stimulation Methods and Field Development Method.

Despite the clearly formulated concepts, the conclusions of the report were somewhat pessimistic. Instead of expanding the application of recovery stimulation methods targeting future reserves recovery, the companies prefer flow stimulation methods that provide only a short-term effect. It was also noted that the current scope of stimulation methods in Russia cannot seriously affect the designed average recovery factor.

Geological-hydrodynamic models used for the development analysis and monitoring help to increase recovery. The TRIAS software package developed by specialists of Samara-based Information Systems Lab Vensis was recommended by the RF Central Commission for the Development of Combustible Fossil Minerals Fields of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Usage (Rosnedra) for the purposes of development and monitoring of oil fields. Apart from TRIAS, Vensis presented at the conference "EOR-Reserves" software package designed for estimation of reserves distribution within a field's area.

New opportunities for improved monitoring efficiency and optimisation of fields development emerge in the course of geological-hydrodynamic simulation of seepage in oil reservoirs and analysis of pore oil-saturated volumes drainable by the seepage. Specialists of the Central Geophysical Expedition propose to use the flow lines simulation model. Their methodology of qualitative analysis is especially relevant due to increased application of new development methods not only for traditional vertical, inclined and horizontal, but also multihole, multilateral and multilayered wells.

Off-Balance Treasures

It is not uncommon when the government starts blaming subsoil users for breaking the licensing terms and "uncivilized attitude to natural resources", namely for "pumping out" oil and gas above the set norms.

However, there may be a situation when actual subsoil reserves exceed the amount transferred by the state to the subsoil user's balance. The fact is that according to the preliminary estimates of the specialists from the Kazan-based Center for Improvement of Oil Fields Development of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, reserves in "off-specification reservoirs", never evaluated by anyone at any Russian fields, could make up to 10-30 percent of the approved oil reserves.
"The special role in facilitating the development of 'off-spec reservoirs' may be played by horizontal recovery techniques (horizontal and multilateral horizontal wells, fracture treatment, etc.)," said Yuri Volkov, director of the Center.

So, the application of state-of-the-art technologies in combination with preliminary reserves recalculation may not only assist in acquitting the company, which supposedly breached the license agreement, but also "in filling up the state bin" with hundreds of millions of tons of such "off-balance" oil reserves, which will turn into the balance reserve category as recovery technologies keep improving.

Also, the amount of absolute geological oil reserves and characteristics of their distribution in certain operated facilities will allow creating more reliable geological and technological simulation models, which in its turn will facilitate more efficient control of balance reserves and probably considerable increase of recovery factor.

How to Increase Oil Recovery?

The new achievements in physical and chemical oil recovery stimulation techniques were the main topics of the report submitted by professor Lyubov Altounina, director of the Petrochemical Institute of the RF Academy of Science Siberian Department.

The institute developed recovery techniques specifically for high-viscosity oils, and their share in total recovered oil is constantly growing. The combination of main methods used for recovery of such oil by applying physical-chemical methods has proved efficient for oil recovery enhancement. "Since complex methods of stimulation are at the initial stage of their development and the total number of such projects is not very large, the interest for them is rather high," said professor Altounina. The Institute of Petrochemistry offers physical and chemical methods, which provide oil viscosity decrease and displacement efficiency rise. Some of them provide for the use of thermotropic non-organic and polymeric gels for seepage control, increase of formation coverage by steam injection and water influx limitation, other methods use surface-active agents based compositions, which generate CO2 through thermal action and form an alkaline buffer system. The institute's research products - the compositions GALKA, METKA, ROMKA, NINKA - are widely used in oil fields not only in Russia but also abroad, for example in China. The institute developed a scientific basis for complex physical-chemical and microbiological oil formation stimulation. In this case activated formation microbial flora stimulates additional oil displacement.

The role of physical and chemical techniques in recovery enhancement was vividly demonstrated by Rustem Nazmetdinov, chief geologist of the OTO company. According to Urievskoje field data, after decline in application of physical and chemical methods for recovery enhancement, of which flow divergence was the dominating technique, the additional production rate in 2003-2005 dropped more than twofold.

UNG-NTS Ufa Filtration Lab specialists suggested using the water-gas impact technology to enhance oil recovery from reservoirs with low permeability and reservoirs containing high-viscosity oil. Conclusions about advantages of this technology were made on the basis of modeling results for limestone with high-viscosity oil at the Obniiskoje field and Priobskoje field's polymeric low-permeability sandstone.

For light oil fields Zarubezhneft recommends to use one of the integrated methods - a thermo-gas technique based on the combination of thermal and gas methods.

Forced fluid recovery for non-uniform carbonaceous fractured reservoirs was also considered among the proposed methods. The first results of pilot operations performed at the Romashkinskoje field by Tatneft have demonstrated oil recovery increase in spite of the water cut rise.

Several types of equipment in combination with the high-temperature vibro-wave technologies (VVT) were developed by the Perm plant named after Kirov in cooperation with Korona-TEK.

Hydrofracturing and Co.

"Nowadays we cannot do without hydrofracturing," noted R.Fakhretdinov, head of Scientific and Analytical Department of Gazpromneft. This method which helps to obtain a significant and rather long-lasting effect, has been applied by the Company since 1990. "Application technique is selected individually for each formation and well, which implies a lot of preparatory activities including gathering and analysis of geological, geophysical and petrophysical data, as well as data pertaining to micro and mini hydrofracturing preceding the main fracturing treatment," said the representative of Gaspromneft. Application of fracturing treatment provides up to 30 percent of additional production as a result of implementation of comprehensive geological and technical activities.

Along with fracturing treatment, drilling of horizontal wells at the company's fields precedes all other geological and technical activities. The new fields Sugmutskoye and Sporyshevskoye were drilled applying the horizontal method, and spacing patterns for those fields were identified after detailed modeling ensuring the optimal position of horizontal wellbore.

"Most of the oil produced at the company's fields was recovered due to application of physical methods, and 63.9 percent of overall production was obtained due to oil recovery enhancement technology," said Yuri Iconnikov, head of LUKOIL's Enhanced Recovery Department. Hydrofracturing is mainly applied at fields handled by LUKOIL-West Siberia and accounts for 87.4 percent of production. However, in general, fracturing treatment in West Siberia is characterized with daily production decrease due to degradation of wells' stock as well as problems of area development.

Of special interest is the new project of LUKOIL concerning vertical ring drilling. It was commenced in December 2005 at oilfields of the daughter company LUKOIL-Perm and used the modified coil tubing technique. Of the 10 selected wells 80 percent were successfully drilled in carbonate reservoirs, and 25 percent - in terrigenous reservoirs.

According to the academician Ravil Ibatullin, Director of TatNIPIneft Institute, Tatneft widely uses horizontal drilling, sidetracking and directional drilling, as well as radial penetration of reservoir carried out in cooperation with the American company RadTech. More than 80 percent of all operations in the company is done with the use of new technologies.

And the Second Will Become First

Although the first multilateral well with nine take-offs from the old hole was drilled in Russia in 1953, lack of positive results at that time was discouraging, and the interest to sidetracking resumed only 30 years later.

Some experts predict that sidetracking in the near future can account for up to 30-50 percent of all drilled wells. There are also some opinions that this percentage can even increase to 70 percent of the total amount. Currently such companies as Bashneft, LUKOIL, Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz, Tatneft and TNK-BP perform sidetracking. During the three years of developing this technology Oil Technology Overseas (OTO) drilled side tracks in 64 wells in the field owned by TPP Langepasneftegaz. The average duration of side track drilling went down and footage per bit was constantly increasing. OTO is preparing to implement a comprehensive program until 2007, providing footage per run with domestic bits more than 200 m owing to implementation of four-stage well clean-up.

ROSING's Brief in Russia to Support Oil and Gas Engineers

From its foundation in February 2002, the Russian Association of Oil and Gas Engineers (ROSING) is guided by the best experience of foreign colleagues and is always ready to adopt it, whether it relates to organizational or scientific and technical aspects.

"It makes no sense to fight windmills, better to do what the whole world does," said Vyacheslav Manyrin, ROSING president, commenting on the national security issues. "Implementation of advanced foreign experience does not mean backing down. We can achieve the goal faster if we apply the best available research work." However, unlike the international Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), uniting about 70,000 of experts, RAOGE at the moment has only 10,000 members. In addition, the Russian Association has somewhat different objectives.

Apart from urgent problems related to accumulation of scientific and practical experience, its distribution and exchange, in addition to career education of specialists and implementation of scientific and technical research work, ROSING also faces problems that need to be resolved at the government level and require modification of legislation. "There are nearly 20,000 independent producers in the US, providing more than 40 percent of production in the country, nearly 8,000 in Canada, and only about 100 in Russia. As long as small producing companies pay the same taxes as Gazprom or LUKOIL the situation will stay the same," said Vyacheslav Manyrin.

At present, ROSING is the only Russian public organization, seeking to make an oil and gas engineering degree honorable and prestigious, and the job well-paid. As it is in the West or used to be in pre-revolutionary Russia. Such attitude would be justified since the oil and gas industry produces most of the new ideas: thus, the oil industry, as well as medicine, generates 30 percent of all patents and inventions in the country.

Keeping up with the Times

The idea to create a Russian-Canadian Oil and Gas Engineering Training Center (RCOGETC) emerged in 1997. The demand for a new generation training center was discussed at scientific and technical councils of LUKOIL-Volga and OTO, at the 1st conference on reservoir recovery increase in Samara. Regular systematic training of engineers and process engineers employed in the sectors of reservoir recovery increase (RRI) and well workover (WWO) operations has turned to be the top priority. ROSING's (Russian Society of Oil and Gas Engineers) initiative to establish the Center was supported by OTO that linked Russian specialists and their Canadian partners from the South Alberta Technology Institute in Calgary.

Eminent scientists contributed to establishment of the Center. Among them are Igor Svetsov, PhD in Engineering Science, Academician Gubkin Prize Winner, honorary employee of the RF Ministry of Fuel and Energy; Leon Grigoryan, PhD in Engineering Science, professor, director of Oil, Gas and Chemical Engineering Institute at Samara State Engineering University (SamGTU); Gennady Pozdnyshev, corresponding member of the RF Technology Academy, the USSR Council of Ministers' Prize Winner; Vladimir Olovyanishnikov, the RF honored inventor; Boris Sazonov, Irina Ezhova, Yelena Rumyantseva, and Yuri Borisevich.

The first workshop devoted to reservoir recovery increase was conducted for regional LUKOIL's geologists in November 2000. In 2001, the number of such workshops reached eighteen. In five years since running the first RRI program, 77 programs were developed. Those were 46 basic programs and 31 external programs ordered by companies in Russia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and Belorussia.

RCOGETC's training courses were developed in close participation with scientists and experts of Giprovostokneft Institute, Samara State Engineering University, Volga Department of the Geology and Fossil Fuels Development Institute, and key personnel of oil companies. Representatives from over twenty Russian companies are invited to be instructors in the Center. In addition, Weatherford's, Radtech's and other companies' specialists also share their experience.

The training plan covers issues of oil, gas and information technologies, ecology and environmental protection, management, human resources, and psychology. Modern ergonomic classrooms are equipped with soft day lighting and air conditioners and seem welcoming to study. The training plan also includes practical training in OTO's laboratories, at facilities of VNIITNeft, SamGTU's Oil and Gas Institute, YUKOS's Training Center in Otradnyi, as well as visits to production enterprises in Samara Region, panel discussions during Volga tours by motor vessel, and this list is not exhaustive.

Liliya Lipina, the Center founder, vice chairman of ROSING's Science and Education Committee, the RF honored teacher believes that in the modern world, any respecting company is to strive for efficient system based personnel development targeted at the fundamental idea of continuing education and training. She comments that the corporate training system enables to involve all industry specialists in the training process and provide for annual training and promotion of leaders, thus contributing to generation of personnel reserve and accumulation of knowledge to solve complicated production tasks.

Growing demand for educational services by Russian-Canadian Oil and Gas Engineering Training Center on the part of companies and the annually increasing number of workshops that reached 245 in June 2006 are indicative of the correct development choice made nine years ago.

• More by Author
• Comments
• Send to a Friend
• Print