Thermal Well Design and Testing

Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) projects emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases and consume massive amounts of water. Furthermore, the cost of water treatment for reuse is high, and the net water loss through wastewater disposal is enormous. The process is associated with potential pitfalls in possible steam breakthroughs that can lead to massive sand production and the erosion of production facilities. With current practices, the SAGD process, on average, emits 60 kg of carbon dioxide to produce one barrel of oil. At least a gigajoule of natural gas (around 26 cubic meters) is required to generate the steam needed to heat the bitumen and produce one barrel of oil.
An HP-HT SAGD testing facility is designed and built to (1) advance technologies for optimal design of oil recovery processes and wellbore completions for thermal wells, (2) validate new thermal well monitoring and data/power communication systems that will be developed in sister projects in the Departments of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, (3) investigate formation damage caused by scaling and fines migration in SAGD wells, (4) study sanding and formation damage in SAGD steam injection wells subjected to well shut-in and steam backflow, (5) study sanding, liner erosion, and formation damage caused by the breakthrough of high- to low-quality steam in SAGD production wells, and (6) study steam collapse and pulsation effect on sanding in SAGD wells, (7) assess various scenarios for post-SAGD waste heat recovery and non-condensable gas Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and pressure support in CP-SAGD and CP-SAGD+ technologies.

Design Optimization of Slotted Liner Completions in Cased and Perforated Wells: A Numerical Skin Model

Alireza Nouri

Conference Proceedings

Thermal Well Design and Testing

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Graduate students, Post-Doctoral Fellows, and Highly Qualified Personnel

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Design Optimization of Slotted Liner Completions in Cased and Perforated Wells: A Numerical Skin Model

Evaluation of the Scaling Resistance of Different Coating and Material for Thermal Operations

Novel Laboratory Methodology for Fines Migration Testing for SAGD Wells

A Review of Fines Migration around Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage Wellbores

A concise review of experimental works on proppant transport and slurry flow

An Analytical Model for Hydraulic Fracture Initiation in Deviated Wellbores

Design a Physical Model for Thermal Well Design and Testing

Design and Development of Experimental Facilities to Study Oil Recovery in Thermal Wells

Electricity Generation from Post-blowdown Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage

Emulsification and Emulsion Flow in Thermal Recovery Operations with a Focus on SAGD Operations: A Critical Review

Formulating a model emulsion replicating SAGD in-situ emulsions

HP-HT Well Completion Testing for Digital Oil Well Technology Validation and Research

HP-HT Well Completion Testing for Digital Oil Well Technology Validation and Research

How the Design Criteria for Slotted Liners in SAGD are Affected by Stress Buildup around the Liner

In-situ Combustion: A Comprehensive Review of the Current State of Knowledge

Introducing A Model Emulsion Replicating SAGD Reservoir Emulsion Features

Near-Wellbore Permeability Damage by Fines Migration in Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage Wells

Near-Wellbore Salinity Effect on Sand Control Plugging by Fines Migration in Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Producer Wells

On the sanding and flow convergence skin in cased and perforated slotted liner wells

Permeability decline by fines migration near sand control screens in steam assisted gravity drainage: A numerical assessment

Physical features’ characterization of the water-in-mineral oil macro emulsion stabilized by a nonionic surfactant

Risk Assessment in Sand Control Selection: Introducing a Traffic Light System in Stand-Alone Screen Selection.

Role of Asphaltene in Stability of Water-in-Oil Model Emulsions: The Effects of Oil Composition and Size of the Aggregates and Droplets

Sand Control Screen Selection for Cased Dual-Annulus Gas Wells based on Scaled Laboratory Tests