Abstract By virtue of the thin oil payzones thickness of oil rim reservoirs, coning of water and gas into

the produced stream are seen in this study to present major production challenge as early breakthrough of these unwanted streams lead to uneconomic asset depletion. This research investigates production optimisation strategies necessary to proffer solutions to the difficulties involved in hydrocarbon recovery from thin oil rim reservoirs. Several simulation models with variable completion intervals, well configurations, were used to determine the severity of water coning and gas cusping in thin oil rims. Thereafter, attempts were made to resolve the problem of early reservoir drive energy depletion by proposing effective depletion strategies. Conventional well techni ue using vertical wells is proven to be inade uate, leading to recommendation of advanced well technologies such as horizontal well as solutions. !lso, loss of oil due to migration outside the oil zone during production is seen as an attendant, lower scale problem " solution for which leads to rate sensitivities#analysis. $n other instances, sensitivity runs are carried out to investigate the influence of certain reservoir and fluid parameters on recovery. %&tensive numerical flow simulations involving synthetic reservoir model are used to show the effectiveness or otherwise of each of the proposed techni ue and thereafter generate production solutions that yield optimum recovery for the thin oil rim reservoir research model.

Background The challenge of profitable e&ploitation of thin oil rim reservoirs is essentially that of finding solution to water and gas coning into the producing wellbore, and to a lesser degree oil resaturation losses into adjacent gas zone. To e&tensively investigate and analyse these problems, numerical simulation models are built in this study largely making use of Schlumberger %clipse'(( )and to a much lesser degree, *ete& +B!,-. The choice of these simulators is informed by the intention to undertake e&tensive prediction simulation studies into the nature of water and gas coning phenomenon in thin oil rim reservoirs while also investigating the drive energy mechanisms behind the production of the oil. Thus using %clipse'((, analytical research tank model was built representative of a regular thin oil column reservoir. $nvestigative simulation runs on the research model with vertical wells reveal that water and gas coning into the producing interval curtail oil production and lead to sub.optimal and inefficient oil production from these fields. !lso, final recovery volumes achieved in these instances in most cases are not enough to support economic asset depletion. Analytical Reservoir Model !s noted earlier, Schlumberger %clipse'(( was employed to build a reservoir model for the purpose of this study. The Cartesian grid model is chosen )due to the relative difficulty of placing a horizontal well within the radial grid model, considering project time frame- and the research model itself is characterised by '' cells )''/.01ft thickness each- in the &.direction, '' cells in the y.direction )''/.01ft thickness each- and / layers in the z.direction. %ach of the layers in the z.direction has a depth of ''/.01ft apart from the 2th )middle- layer representing the oil rim which has a thickness of 34.3/ft. 5se is made of local grid refinement ),67- to further finely discretise the grid around the oil payzone to better simulate the effect of coning in this region. The propagation and historical development of the cone interface is studied while time to breakthrough and after.breakthrough performance is thus modelled and monitored with better accuracy.

The 68C )gas oil contact- was placed after the first shallow 9 layers )9 & ''/.01ft- in the tank model to demarcate the gas cap zone while the :8C )water oil contact- was located at /1('.2/ft below the reservoir top to delineate the water zone from the oil zone.

Vertical well technique in thin oil rim depletion. Simulating production of the oil rim reservoir model using the conventional vertical well, it was found out that recovery level was low compared to industry standards and more importantly, when subjected to economic analysis, recovery volumes achieved could hardly support economic depletion of asset. The problem and severity of coning )water and gas-, and also of oil resaturation losses became clearly visible in these runs, while the inade uacy of the present depletion strategy became glaring. $n an effort to improve this, it was discovered that factors such as the location of the well placement#perforation and oil rates play significant roles in determining the final oil recovery volumes achieved from these fields. ;epending upon the configuration of the reservoir gas cap and a uifer, when the well is perforated too near the gas cap zone, early gas coning into the producing sandface limit oil production< also when well perforation is made too close to the a uifer, early coning of water reduces and ultimately aborts oil production. =evertheless, even upon optimising the well perforation location, recovery improvements achieved was still not economically ade uate, thus necessitating the search for better depletion strategies. Horizontal well per ormance in producing thin rim reservoirs. ;eploying the horizontal well in producing the research reservoir model whilst keeping all other reservoir model parameters constant, simulation results revealed that production performance was significantly better, with improvement witnessed in the following areas> a. ?igher field oil recovery efficiency )@8%- achieved b. !cceleration of production timeframe to reach final recovery. These improvements in producing thin rims achieved by the horizontal wells as compared with the vertical well were made possible as a result of delayed coning e&perienced in the case of the horizontal well depletion and also as as a result of its superior post.coning

breakthrough oil flow performance. The delay of the breakthrough of the fluid interphase cone into the producing interval ensures that reservoir energy if preserved for as long as possble for productive work in driving formation oil to the wellbore. 8nce again as in the case of the vertical well, optimum well placement improved production dramatically, with increment of as high as '2(A achieved over the corresponding vertical well case run. ! ect o various reservoir parameters on production rom thin oil rim reservoirs. @urther sensitivity studies into the influence of other well and reservoir parameters indicate that to varying degrees, some other parameters that influence recovery from thin rims include factors such as reservoir oil pay thickness, size of accompanying reservoir gas cap and a uifer, reservoir permeability and anisotropy, rate of production )super. critical or less-. 6enerally, for the thin oil rim reservoirs, irregardless of the deployed well techni ue, determining the optimum well perforation#placement location yielding the ma&imum field oil recovery efficiency is a balancing act between the influence of forces of the gas cap drive and the a uifer drive energy. The process of finding this optimum location is tremendously assisted and optimised by carrying out e&tensive numerical simulations on the reservoir model. $nvestigations into the nature and strength of the reservoir drive energy available to drive oil flow is also aided in this study by using data made available from simulations in the tank models. !s highlighted by the results of sensitivity studies, formations with higher horizontal permeability are better able to sustain oil flow for longer period, thereby delaying onset of gas breakthrough and the accompanying reservoir pressure decline. 8ne important observation made from the sensitivities )carried out by varying the reservoir permeability while keeping all other parameters constant- was that as permeability increases, field recovery is optimised by shifting the well location from the middle payzone section to the lower section of the reservoir model in contrast with the earlier reservoir models with low permeability where optimum recovery was achieved by middle payzone depth well perforation. !nother factor affecting thin rim production performance is the reservoir

anisotropy. 7esults from this study show that that the greater the degree of reservoir permeability anisotropy, the greater the recovery possible. !part from the reservoir rock properties, a major factor determining the size of the dominant reservoir drive mechanisms and thus influencing optimum recovery from thin rims is the size of the adjacent gas cap and a uifer zones. Simulation studies into the influence of these adjourning zones in recovery show that the size and thus the strength of the accompanying gas cap play a major role in influencing optimum well placement. @or the various reservoir models employed for sensitivity studies as regards the gas cap, it became clear that depending on the size of the accompanying gas cap zone, optimum well location to derive ma&imum recovery oscillated between that lower, middle and upper regions of the oil pay thickness. $nterestingly, for the case of the weak gas cap zone )m.factor B (.3-, optimum well placement location was discovered to be completely out of the oil pay but just above the gas.oil contact )68C-, taking advantage of reverse coning as a production strategy.

Viable "epletion #trategies @inally, to combat and mitigate the problems of coning and oil resaturation losses in thin rim production and lead to economic depletion of these types of assets, the results of the research study shows conclusively some depletion strategies that it becomes necessary to adopt.
i. ii. iii.

!doption of advanced well techni ues such as the horizontal well. 8ptimising producing well placement or.perforation. $dentification of the size and strength of the reservoir drive mechanism to to optimise well placement

iv. v.

6as cap blowdown#reverse coning )weak gas cap-. *roduction rate reduction.