SPE-190442-MS

Surveillance of Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage in In-Depth Extra-Heavy Oil

Reservoir

Wang Hongyuan, Development Management Department, Liaohe Oilfield, CNPC; Guo Erpeng, RIPED, CNPC

Copyright 2018, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia held in Muscat, Oman, 26-28 March 2018.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
In 2008, We presented a paper "Application of Temperature Observation Wells during SAGD Operations
in a Medium Deep Burial Extra Heavy Oil Reservoir" at the Petroleum Society's 59th Annual Technical
Meeting. After 10 years SAGD technology is already widely adopted in exploiting extra heavy oil in China.
This paper summarizes the experience on surveillance of SAGD project in the past years.
During SAGD process the adjustment of steam chamber in both vertical and horizontal direction and
operation parameters should base on synthetic surveillance data. In the past, the surveillance approach is
very limited and the results cannot be used as effective indicators. The successful application of reservoir
based synthetic surveillance approach produced reliable data for management of SAGD project in Du
84 block Liaohe Oil field. The applied technical series include pressure/temperature observation wells,
pressure/temperature monitoring in horizontal wells, time-lapse seismic monitoring, micro-gravity test etc.
With the help of these monitoring data, the accurate and long term effective database was established.
The application of synthetic monitoring system provides the opportunity of accurate control of
steam injection and production. The temperature and pressure observation well can monitor the vertical
development of steam chamber, especially in gas-SAGD process. The observation well can detect the
vertical sweep area of injected gas which can give effective approach in SAGD management. The
temperature and pressure monitoring and tracer test can provide information for connection between injector
and producer. 4-Dimensional seismic and 4-Dimensional micro gravity is a new approach of combination
for petro-physical technology and petroleum development. 4D seismic not only can remap the geological
body but also it can depict the steam chamber distribution in the reservoir. 4D micro gravity monitoring can
accurately detect the front of steam chamber. With these data, the distribution of steam zone and residual
oil is clear for future reservoir management.
This paper gives a verified approach of surveillance and the corresponding operation adjustment. And
this can be guidance for design and application of new SAGD surveillance system.
Key Words: SAGD, surveillance, time-lapse seismic, micro-gravity
2 SPE-190442-MS

Introduction
Shu-1 area of Liaohe Oilfield Company contains about 1.2 billion barrels of extra heavy oil in place. CSS
has been used as the major production technology using vertical and horizontal wells. The reservoir has
a depth of 530-800 m, average porosity of 26-36%, and permeability of 1-5 Darcy and crude viscosity of
16-60×104 mPa.s (50°C). It is classified as a high porosity and high permeability extra heavy oil reservoir
with a thick top and side water zones.

Table 1—Main characteristics for SAGD project area

Formation Guantao XLT-I XLT-VI

Depth/m 530~640 650~680 660~850

Average thickness/m 78.6 14.2 33.7

Median grain diameter /mm 0.42 0.34 0.47

Formation
Porosity % 36.3 30.3 26.6
property
Permeability/mD 5539 2277 1062

20°C density/(g/cm3) 1.007 1.007 1.001

Crude
50°CViscosity/l04mPa.s 23.191 19.16 16.815
Property
Asphaltane+Resin content/% 52.9 56.8 57.84

Formation temperature/°C 30 35 38

Formation pressure/MPa 6.02 6.35 7.35

Since 2002, production in this block keeps at high level about 40 thousand BOPD. This block became
main contributor for stable production in Liaohe Oil field. Before 2005, the oil field was developed with
cyclic steam stimulation[1]. As of the end of 2004, 243 cycles were performed using CSS production in
the pilot area and this gives 7.2 cycles per well on average. The cumulative steam injected was 544,000
tonnes and the cumulative oil production was 381,000 tonnes. The cumulative oil to steam ratio (OSR) was
0.70 and the oil recovery factor was 15.3% of OOIP. The ratio of the produced water to the injected steam
volume was 0.88 and the total void spacing in the formation was 316,000m3. The current reservoir pressure
is 2.5 to 3.0 MPa. Although CSS is successful in producing the extra heavy oil from the Guantao formation,
production performance became poorer and poorer as the number of cycles increased. As a result, operating
costs increased as oil rates, cumulative oil production and OSR per cycle decreased. Reservoir modeling
indicated that the ultimate oil recovery is only 22~25% of OOIP. The conversion to a follow-up recovery
process becomes imperative.
In 2005 SAGD pilot test with combination of vertical injectors and horizontal producers were carried out
in this area[2]. The distance between wells with 70m spacing between the horizontal producers. The vertical
injectors are located at 35 m horizontally off-set distance and about 5 m vertical off-set distance from the
horizontal producers. The perforation intervals for the injectors range from 5 to 7 meters. The horizontal
sections for producers are 300 to 400 meters (Fig. 2). Since 2007 to 2012, the 48 well groups in phase 1
were convert to SAGD operation[3] and yearly production reached 0.7 million ton. In 2017, another 24 well
groups were converted to SAGD operation and yearly oil production reached 1.06 million ton. The SAGD
technology became very important part of 10 million ton oil production plan in Liaohe Oil field.
SPE-190442-MS 3

Figure 1—Well locations in Guantao SAGD pilot

Figure 2—Producer monitoring system

Comprehensive surveillance is the basis for production management and development adjustment. The
key part of SAGD operation is to detect the problems, analyses the situation and give a comprehensive
solution for it. After 10 year application of the SAGD technology, a comprehensive surveillance system
for du 84 block was built. This system can provide exact, synthetic, effective surveillance data in there
long term which will be used in SAGD application and production management. The block-wised synthetic
surveillance system includes: reservoir surveillance, surface surveillance, information sharing network and
data acquision system. In this paper the reservoir surveillance system was introduced in detail which
includes: producer monitoring system temperature monitoring well, time-lapse micro-gravity monitoring,
4-D seismic monitoring.

Producer monitoring system

The main data from producer monitoring system is wellbore temperature, wellbore pressure, wellhead
pressure/ temperature and dynamic fluid level. These data is crucial to determine subcool status and effective
production interval along horizontal well. Generally wellbore temperature is achieved with thermal couple
along the tubing and wellbore pressure was get through capillary pressure sensor.
Along the wellbore, there are 4 temperature monitoring point. The position of them are below the pump,
heel point, 1/3 length from the toe and at the toe. The 2 pressure sensor was placed near the pump and 1/3
length from heel. All the thermal couple and capillary sensor were placed in 1 inch coil tubing. And the
coiled tubing were placed in φ48mm conduit pipe in order to avoid damage from nipple down and up of
pump(figure 2).
Vertical injector – horizontal producer combined SAGD process is different form dual horizontal well
SAGD process in that the productivity of combined SAGD process depends on the steam chamber
development along the producer[4]. So if the high temperature zone and area along the wellbore was
4 SPE-190442-MS

increased, the horizontal well production will be improved. Also the status of the horizontal interval can
be reflected with the temperature monitoring. In figure 3 gives the temperature variance before and after
adjustment. It can be observed that before August the temperature profile at the toe point was only 100 °C
which means the production at the toe area is abnormal. The reason is the cumulative production during CSS
period is not as high as other wells. Also another indicator is the temperature distribution before converting
to SAGD. The injecting pressure is higher than other wells which mean the connection between injector
and producer is not effective. The adjustment is to increase steam injection at the toe area. After about 1
month, the effective interval along the wellbore is increased from 1/2 to 2/3.

Figure 3—Temperature variance before and after adjustment

Monitoring well
The monitoring well can monitor the variance of reservoir temperature, pressure and oil saturation. The
purpose is to determine the temperature and pressure of steam chamber and development of steam chamber
in vertical and horizontal direction.
Monitoring steam chamber development in SAGD period was already detailed discussed in paper in
2008[5]. In this paper, the steam chamber development monitoring in SAGP period was discussed. Since
2011, Guantao pilot N2-SAGD test was started (fig 4). Nitrogen was selected as the injected media. Until
2015, 7 slugs (6.6 million m3) N2 was injected[6]. And daily oil production was increased from 265t/d to
399t/d. And oil steam ratio was improved from 0.23 to 0.39 (fig 5).

Figure 4—Deployment of Guantao N2-SAGD pilot test and temperature profile for individual monitoring wells
SPE-190442-MS 5

Figure 5—Performance of Guantao N2-SAGD pilot test

Before application of N2-SAGD process, the steam chamber development became faster than expected.
From the observation well data, the steam chamber height increased by 17m, and the total height reached
65m. Comparing to steam injection rate before application of N2-SAGD process, steam injection rate
decreased sharply after N2 was injected[7]. Especially during 2nd slug injection, the steam injection was
stopped due to workover of all the injectors in pilot area. But the daily oil rate and liquid rate kept stable.
This indicates that the injected N2 can sustain the steam chamber pressure. At the same time injected N2
decreased the pressure difference at the reservoir top and bottom, which showing the push effect for crude.
In this period, water cut in pilot area decreased from 85% to 75%. And the areal development of steam
chamber is obvious. In figure 4, No.1 and No.2 monitoring well shows no evidence of steam chamber before
application of N2-SAGD. But after N2 slugs were injected, temperature profile increases quickly and peak
temperature for No.2 well increased from 113°C to 221°C. This indicates that steam chamber is developing
to this direction.

Figure 6—The temperature variance in monitoring well before and after N2-SAGD application.

Time-lapse microgravity
Time-lapse microgravity method is aiming to measure the spatial and temporal variations in the gravitational
field repeatly[8]. In the process of oil and gas production, the underground density will be redistributed,
leading to changes in the local gravity field. When the change of gravity value reaches the accuracy
limit of the gravimeter, we can achieve a qualitative or quantitative description of the mass migration
6 SPE-190442-MS

in a hydrocarbon reservoir by time-lapse microgravity measurements. When time-lapse microgravity

monitoring technology is combined with the production figures, the goal of improving production efficiency
can be achieved by analysis the changes of steam chambers and reservoir.
Oil production and steam injection can change the density of the reservoir, especially steam injection
which produces a maximum density difference up to 0.45g / cm3. In order to analyze shapes of steam
chambers and their variation, a microgravity calculation model of target layer is established. The depth of
target layer including steam injection layer and heavy oil layer is 650m to 780m.
The upper layer of this total thickness of the target layer is 130m constantly. As the amount of steam
injection increases, the thickness of the upper layer increases as well, and the thickness of the lower layer
decreases correspondingly, the result from which causes gravity anomaly.
Taking practicability and efficiency into account, the steam injection layer begins at the original depth
650m, where the thickness of injection layer is 0 originally. Then the thickness of injection layer is gradually
added in steps of 10m, while the thickness of injection layer should be reduced by 10m. The specific
parameters of the model and the gravity change values calculated by the model are shown in Table 2.

Table 2—Gravity – steam chamber relationship model

Chamber height(m) 0 10 20 40 60 70

Chamber density(g/cm3) 2.43 2.38 2.3 2.18 2.05 1.98

density difference(g/cm3) 0 0.05 0.13 0.25 0.38 0.45

Gravity difference(μ Gal) 0 12.47 64.53 245.83 555.18 763.39

The time-lapse microgravity survey zone is SAGD zone of layer Guantao. The sampling interval of points
is 12.5m globally. The sampling interval of points in the southwest zone in the survey area is 12.5m, while
the sampling interval of points in other area is 25m. The total 705 measuring points are designed in this
survey zone.

Figure 7—Time lapse Micro gravity image @ – 20μ Gal

Residual gravity anomalies of the steam chamber are described by separation of gravity field and
extraction of anomalies. We can notice that the steam chamber expands year by year. The basic law of
SPE-190442-MS 7

expansion we concluded is that the steam chamber expands from the steam injection well to the horizontal
production well first. The bar-shaped steam chamber is perpendicular to the horizontal well. After the steam
chambers fully connect production wells and injection wells, they begin to develop between the steam
injection wells parallelly. Finally, a large-scaled steam chamber is developed within a certain range. Three
steam chambers, namely A, B, C, are developed simultaneously as shown in figure 1. Production strategy
can be effectively controlled and guided according to the distribution of steam chambers.

4-D seismic monitoring

4D seismic monitoring was first proposed in middle of 1970s. And it got quickly development in 1990s
as a modern reservoir management method[9]. It utilizes data sampled at different time to depict seismic
attributes variance and to predict the reservoir characteristics. Based on petrophysical study and forward
modeling, it was decided that 4-D seismic can be used in Guantao formation to monitor the reservoir fluid
variance. In 2009 and 2011, 2 times of seismic were carried out with similar observation system(transverse
longitudinal ratio 0.84, unit size 6.25×6.25m, folds 9×10).
Comparing the 2 seismic results (fig 8c), the variation of reservoir can be clearly shown on the
seismic images. Combining the development history, the horizontal well in area with bigger variance starts
production after 2009. And the horizontal well in area with less difference started production before 2009.
In figure 8d, the 4 horizontal wells were put into production in 2004 with combined vertical injector and
horizontal producer, and before 2004 this area was operated with vertical well CSS.

Figure 8—Seismic images for 2009 and 2011 (a)2009 seismic image, white line is horizontal well
(b)2011 seismic image (c)Seismic difference profile. (d)visualization of 4D seismic difference.

Conclusions
1. The synthetic surveillance is the basis of management of SAGD project. The adjustment of injection
and production parameters especially the monitoring of steam chamber development is the key points
for improving SAGD performance.
8 SPE-190442-MS

2. Block-wised reservoir surveillance system is an synthetic solution for surveillance. Of it reservoir

surveillance is most important which includes: producer monitoring system temperature monitoring
well, time-lapse micro-gravity monitoring, 4-D seismic monitoring.
3. Producer monitoring and temperature monitoring is the premise for production management. With
the temperature monitoring well giving pressure and temperature data for steam chamber and down
hole monitoring device giving the pressure and temperature distribution along wellbore, the horizontal
well production and sub-cool can be adjusted to optimum status.
4. Time-lapse micro gravity and 4D seismic are both effective approach for steam chamber monitoring.
The advantage of time-lapse microgravity is the investment of this method is less. But it can not give
enough high resolution in vertical profile. 4-D seismic is more expensive but it can give clear picture
in vertical section. So combination of these 2 methods can give better understanding of steam chamber
development.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge CNPC Company for permission to publish this paper. Also
the authors would like to acknowledge the support of National Science and Technology Major Project
2016ZX05012002 – 002 group to fulfill this work.

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