OIL RESERVOIR CHARACTERIZATION AND CO2 INJECTION MONITORING IN THE PERMIAN BASIN WITH CROSSWELL ELECTROMAGNETIC IMAGING

Abstract

Substantial petroleum reserves exist in US oil fields that cannot be produced economically, at current prices, unless improvements in technology are forthcoming. Recovery of these reserves is vital to US economic and security interests as it lessens our dependence on foreign sources and keeps our domestic petroleum industry vital. Several new technologies have emerged that may improve the situation. The first is a series of new flooding techniques to re-pressurize reservoirs and improve the recovery. Of these the most promising is miscible CO{sub 2} flooding, which has been used in several US petroleum basins. The second is the emergence of new monitoring technologies to track and help manage this injection. One of the major players in here is crosswell electromagnetics, which has a proven sensitivity to reservoir fluids. In this project, we are applying the crosswell EM technology to a CO{sub 2} flood in the Permian Basin oil fields of New Mexico. With our partner ChevronTexaco, we are testing the suitability of using EM for tracking the flow of injected CO{sub 2} through the San Andreas reservoir in the Vacuum field in New Mexico. The project consisted of three phases, the first of which was a preliminary field test at Vacuum, where a prototype system was tested in oil field conditions including widely spaced wells with steel casing. The results, although useful, demonstrated that the older technology was not suitable for practical deployment. In the second phase of the project, we developed a much more powerful and robust field system capable of collecting and interpreting field data through steel-cased wells. The final phase of the project involved applying this system in field tests in the US and overseas. Results for tests in steam and water floods showed remarkable capability to image between steel wells and provided images that helped understand the geology and ongoing flood and helped better manage the field. The future of this technology is indeed bright with development ongoing and a commercialization plan in place. We expect that this DOE sponsored technology will be a major technical and commercial success story in the coming years.