Parametric Study of Heavy Oil Recovery by Electromagnetic Heating on a Horizontal Well

M. Liu[1], G. Zhao[1]
[1]University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada
Published in 2012

This study presents a oil-gas two-phase linear flow EMH model using COMSOL Multiphysics simulator. Special attention is focused on reservoirs with characteristics for which steam injection is not attractive or feasible such as low permeability, thin-zone, and extra-heavy oil reservoirs. Comparisons showed that cumulative oil production obtained by EM heating is better than what is achieved by a similar enhanced oil recovery technique called single well steam assisted gravity drainage (SW-SAGD) process for reservoirs with the above mentioned characteristics using simulator STARS.To investigate EMH performance compared to SW-SAGD, two cases were run for oil reservoirs in both COMSOL and STARS, where the application of other thermal techniques are difficult or have proven to be unsuccessful. EMH has shown its potential as an alternative to steam injection, and yields better recovery factors especially for thin-zones and low-permeability reservoirs.

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