Fy. Wong et al., DESIGN AND FIELD TRIAL APPLICATION OF FOAM IN PRODUCTION WELLS TO IMPROVE CONFORMANCE, Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, 36(2), 1997, pp. 21-32
Citations number
13
Categorie Soggetti
Energy & Fuels","Engineering, Chemical","Engineering, Petroleum
Many of the hydrocarbon vertical miscible floods in the Keg River carb
onate reefs of the Rainbow Field are at a mature stage of reservoir de
pletion, and are characterized by thin oil sandwiches, high gas recycl
e and declining oil production. Under these adverse conditions, conven
tional workover techniques to control gas recycle and improve oil prod
uctivity have diminishing success. In considering alternative strategi
es to reduce gas coning Husky felt that injection of a gas-blocking fo
am barrier into a gas cone had the potential to be a cost-effective tr
eatment. This paper describes the experimental foam treatments conduct
ed on two production wells, each in a different miscible flood pool. A
spects of the laboratory work, numerical coning simulation, well selec
tion process and foam placement strategy that went into the field trea
tment design are presented. On one ,well,the foam-forming surfactant w
as injected as an aqueous solution to allow in situ foam generation, a
nd also as a surface-generated preformed foam. Neither method was succ
essful in improving the performance of this well. On the other well, w
here only preformed foam was injected, the treatment was successful in
reducing gas-oil ratio (GOR) and improving oil production over a 14 m
onth period. Much of the experience gained from the field treatments w
ill facilitate the efficient planning, design, implementation and eval
uation of future foam projects.