In-situ combustion handbook--principles and practices

For nearly 90 years in-situ combustion technique has been used in the U.S. in attempts to improve recovery from oil reservoirs. Despite its long history and commercial success of many field projects, the process has not found widespread acceptance among operators due to the excessive number of failures of many early field trails. Most of these failures can be traced to the inappropriate application of the process in poorer prospects. Analysis of the successful projects, however, indicates that the process is applicable to a wide range of reservoirs, and the chances of failures can be minimized by careful selection of the reservoir and adopting prudent engineering practices. The current work was undertaken to encourage operators to consider implementing this proven oil recovery process in their reservoir by presenting the state-of-the-art knowledge and best practices of fireflood in simple terms. The organization of the handbook emphasizes practical aspects of the process. Unlike the steam process, no comprehensive text currently exists that has been devoted exclusively to fireflood. Hence, equations and detailed calculation procedures needed to engineer and evaluate the performance of an in-situ combustion project are included. The handbook includes ten chapters including the introduction chapter. The principles of the combustion process and its variations are discussed in Chapter 2. Since laboratory studies are an integral part of a fireflood project, Chapter 3 is devoted to kinetic and combustion tube studies. The reservoir geological and site selection criteria for a fireflood project site are reviewed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents a step by step approach for designing fireflood projects. Case history of selected U.S. and non-U.S. combustion projects are presented in Chapter 6. The compressor and air plant requirements for combustion projects are addressed in Chapter 7. Since ignition is a critical element of fireflood, issues pertaining to the ignition of reservoirs are fully discussed in Chapter 8. The Chapter 9 covers the well completion and operational issues pertaining to fireflood. The enriched air/oxygen fireflood requirements are discussed in the final chapter.