Abstract
There are numerous oil fields that are approaching the end of their lifetime and that have great geothermal potential considering temperature and water cut. On the other hand, the oil industry is facing challenges due to increasingly stringent environmental regulations. An example of this is the case of France where oil extraction will be forbidden starting from the year 2035. Therefore, some oil companies are considering switching from the oil business to investing in geothermal projects conducted on existing oil wells. The proposed methodology and developed conversions present the evaluation of existing geothermal potentials for each oil field in terms of water temperature and flow rate. An additional important aspect is also the spatial distribution of existing oil wells related to the specific oil field. This paper proposes a two-stage clustering approach for grouping similar wells in terms of their temperature properties. Once grouped on a temperature basis, these clusters should be clustered once more with respect to their spatial arrangement in order to optimize the location of production facilities. The outputs regarding production quantities and economic and environmental aspects will provide insight into the optimal scenario for oil-to-water conversion. The scenarios differ in terms of produced energy and technology used. A case study has been developed where the comparison of overall fields and clustered fields is shown, together with the formed scenarios that can further determine the possible conversion of petroleum assets to a geothermal assets.
Highlights
Geothermal heat has been traditionally extracted at locations characterized by hydrogeological anomalies, but recent advances in engineering have enabled the development of alternative approaches such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) and borehole heat exchangers (BHE) [1,2,3]
The comprehensive methodology takes into account production technology, economic and environmental parameters, and, together with the presented two-stage clustering, provides various options for further converting petroleum to a geothermal facility while regulatory and policy aspects of such action are left with the knowledge of the user or potential investor, since this is highly country and project specific
One of the main features of the conversion is bi-level clustering, which facilitates firstly clustering of the wells according to geothermal fluid temperature into a different end-use group, and secondly, clustering of the wells into spatial groups according to the distance between each well
Summary
Geothermal heat has been traditionally extracted at locations characterized by hydrogeological anomalies, but recent advances in engineering have enabled the development of alternative approaches such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) and borehole heat exchangers (BHE) [1,2,3] Both technologies can enable harvesting Earth’s heat without any (or little) location constraints. After entering the input data for each scenario, the conversion tool will calculate four main outputs: produced energy quantities, LCOE or LCOH, NPV, and avoided CO2 emissions. Based on these results, the user can decide which conversion option is optimum for a given petroleum asset
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