Numerical modeling of geomechanical effects of steam injection in SAGD heavy oil recovery Setayesh Zandi To cite this version: Setayesh Zandi. Numerical modeling of geomechanical effects of steam injection in SAGD heavy oil recovery. Applied geology. École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, 2011. English. NNT : 2011ENMP0058. pastel-00671450 HAL Id: pastel-00671450 https://pastel.archives-ouvertes.fr/pastel-00671450 Submitted on 17 Feb 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. N°: 2009 ENAM XXXX École doctorale n° 398 : Géosciences et Ressources Naturelles Doctorat ParisTech T H È S E pour obtenir le grade de docteur délivré par l’École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris Spécialité “Technique et Economie de l’Exploitation du Sous-sol” présentée et soutenue publiquement par Setayesh ZANDI 5 septembre 2011 Numerical modeling of geomechanical effects of steam injection in SAGD heavy oil recovery Modélisation des effets géomécaniques de l’injection de vapeur dans les réservoirs de bruts lourds Directeur de thèse : Michel TIJANI Co-encadrement de la thèse : Jean-François NAUROY Jury T M. Pierre BEREST , Directeur de Recherche, Ecole Polytechnique Rapporteur M. Alain MILLARD , Professeur, Ecole Centrale Rapporteur H M. Jean-François THIMUS , Professeur, Université Catholique de Louvain Président M. Atef ONAISI , Docteur Ingénieur, Directeur de « Geomecanics Services », TOTAL Examinateur È M. Darius SEYEDI , Docteur Ingénieur, BRGM Examinateur M. Jean-François NAUROY , Docteur Ingénieur, IFPEN Examinateur S M. Michel TIJANI , Directeur de Recherche, Ecole MinesParisTech Examinateur E MINES ParisTech Centre de Géosciences 35 rue Saint-Honoré 77305 Fontainebleau I gratefully dedicate this thesis to my parents, whose love and support I will forever be thankful. And to my husband, Reza, for his love, support, encouragement and for giving me a happy and complete life. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another. (Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher, author ) Life is a science: knowledge of consequences of our actions, and dependence of our existence on the others! Although working on a PhD is a solitary and self-determined activity, you need many people to collaborate with, whose knowledge and experience allow the project’s direction to be adjusted or reoriented. Here, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to start this thesis and mostly to the people who supported me to complete my PhD. First and foremost I want to thank my supervisor, Professor Michel Tijani, who gave me the opportunity of being a PhD student at prestigious Mines Paris Tech. His special approach of guidance and support from the initial to the final level of this thesis enabled me to develop a successful research methodology. I wish to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my advisor; Dr. Jean-François Nauroy, who taught me how to think about and analyse the geomechanical problems. I sincerely appreciate his knowledge, leadership, patience, continuos support and insightful comments during this project. His availability for discussions and his encouragements for trying new solutions when the project got blocked was one of the main sources of motivation for me. I am deeply grateful to my co-advisor; Dr. Gerard Renard, who was my reference in reservoir engineering and directed me in reservoir simulation studies. I am thankful for his detailed and constructive comments, for his important support and encouragements especially during the difficult periods of research and writing my manuscript. I appreciate all his contributions of time and ideas to make my PhD a productive and stimulating experience. I would like to thank Dr. Nicolas Guy, whose help, stimulating suggestions, kind support and guidance have been of great value in this study. I wish to thank also Dr. Guillaume Servant; now at EDF, who defined this thesis project and initiated this work. Furthermore, I would like to thank the members of my reading committee; Professor Pierre Berest; from Ecole Polytechnique, and Professor Alain Millard; from Ecole Centrale, for their time, detailed review, constructive criticism and excellent advice during the final phase of this thesis. I also convey my regards to the other members of my oral dissertation defence committee; Dr. Atef Onaisi; from TOTAL, Dr. Jean-François Thimus; from Université Catholique de Louvain, and Dr. Darius Seyedi; from BRGM, for their time and insightful questions. During this work I have collaborated with many colleagues for whom I have great regard, and I wish to extend my warmest thanks to all those who have helped me with my work in the “Reservoir Engineering Division” and “Applied Mechanics Division” of IFP Energies Nouvells and the "TEES Group" of Mines Paris Tech. I offer my regards to Dr. Olga Vizika, Dr. Frederic Roggero and Dr. Patrick Lemonier and Dr. Eric Heinzé. My sincere thanks go to Dr. Laurent Cangemi, Dr. Axel Baroni, Gilles Férér, Dr. Florence Adjemian, Dr. Sandrine Vidal-Gilbert, Dr. Elisabeth Bemer, Dr. Habiba Boulhart, Sylvie Hoguet, Dominique Vasiliadis and Dovy Tristani. I am grateful for the time spent with my former colleagues at IFP Energies Nouvelles especially Leila Heidari, Eleonor Roguet, Daniel Quesada, Ekaterina Sergienko, Zyed Bouzarkouna, Jeremy Rosak, Sandra Buret and Jeremy Dautriat. Leila thank you, it was great to have the coffee breaks together, to share our happy moments of new discoveries, and to help each other in dealing with frustrations and disappointments. I express my gratitude to Dr. Samir Ben Chaaban, Head of Mechanics Department at Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieur Léonard de Vinci, who gave me the opportunity of working as a teaching assistant during the last year of my thesis. I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. Yosra Guetari, my former finite element teacher at UVSQ and actual colleague at ESILV with whom I share an office, for her valuable advice and friendly help. We would be lost without teachers. In my case, this is particularly true. I am indebted to many of my teachers and here I would like to express my gratitude to them. My special thanks to Dr. Gilles Perrin, Dr. Paolo Vannucci, Dr. Laurant Champany, Dr. Hélène Dumontet and Dr. Françoise Léné who taught me mechanics and Dr. Arezoo Modaressi from Central Paris. Most importantly, none of this would have been possible without the love and patience of my family which has been a constant source of motivation, support and strength all these years. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my parents; Parisima and Habib, my brothers; Soroosh and Sarshar, my parents in-law and my sisters in-law; Maryam and Marjan. I owe my especial loving thanks to my dearest husband; Réza, for his help, patience and support. Without his encouragement and accompanying it would have been impossible for me to finish this work. Thank you Réza, you are my strength and you make each day worthwhile for me. Setayesh ZANDI Paris, 2011 CONTENTS CONTENTS.............................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 ............................................................................................................................. 9 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 9 1.1. Problem Statement..................................................................................................... 9 1.2. Organisation of the report....................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 2 ........................................................................................................................... 21 Heavy Oil Challenges ......................................................................................................... 21 2.1. Definitions................................................................................................................. 22 2.2. Oil Sands and Bitumen Characteristics................................................................. 23 2.3. Formation of Vast Resources.................................................................................. 24 2.4. Heavy Oil Worldwide Resources............................................................................ 25 2.5. Heavy Oil Recovery Methods ................................................................................. 30 2.5.1. Mining ................................................................................................................. 32 2.5.2. Cold Production ................................................................................................... 33 2.5.3. Enhanced Oil Recovery Methods ........................................................................ 36 2.6. Environmental Issues............................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER 3 ..........................................................................................................................