State of the art and numerical simulation study in steam flooding of lightand medium crude oil reservoirs

The state of the art in the area of steam flooding in light and medium crud e oil reservoirs is presented. The objective of this study is to completely describe the technology and evaluate its potential applications in Venezue lan reservoirs. Physical and numerical simulations reported in the literatu re have demonstrated that oil recovery percentages up to 50-65% are possibl e by using steam flooding after water flooding technologies. Additionally V alues as low as 5-8% of residual oil saturations were reported for the stea m swept zone, which are significantly lower than those found with cold (40- 60%) and hot (35%) water From the statistical point of view, he number of s uccessful field tests is twice as much as he failure cases. Increases in th e oil production as soon as five months after initiated steam injection hav e been reported in the field tests with values of residual oil saturations of 5-8% and important increments in the oil production. Based on these resu lts it can be concluded that steam flooding technology for tight and medium crude oil represents a new alternative with high potential applications.