Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), Steamflooding, and SAGD — Including Rejuvenation of Mature, Idle, and Abandoned Heavy Oil Fields in Venezuela

 

Assign your company's thermal/steam EOR project design, evaluation, and optimization challenges — including the rejuvenation, redevelopment, and reactivation of mature, idle, and abandoned heavy oil and extra-heavy oil fields in Venezuela — to A&A, and let the high-level, seasoned thermal/steam EOR consultants of the A&A Consulting Team bring decades of Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), steamflooding, and SAGD experience, dating back to the 1970s, to your most challenging projects, in Venezuela and around the world.

 

Avasthi & Associates, Inc. (A&A) is an independent petroleum engineering consulting firm. A&A does not sell steam-generation equipment, thermal EOR chemicals or additives, or reservoir-simulation software — our only business is expert technical consulting, which means our thermal/steam EOR recommendations are never influenced by a stake in any particular vendor or technology.

A&A is an oil field thermal/steam EOR consulting company. Since the 1970s, the high-level, seasoned thermal/steam EOR consultants of the A&A Consulting Team have worked on the design, evaluation, and optimization of major thermal/steam EOR projects in California, Canada, Venezuela, and other countries around the world, gaining extensive experience across all aspects of these projects — from feasibility and pilot-test design through full-field development and mature-asset rejuvenation. Our consultants are available to work on your company's thermal/steam EOR project studies, at our office or at your offices, around the world, including, but not limited to, projects involving:

•     Hot Water Injection

•     Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS)

•     Steamflooding (SF)

•     Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD)

•     SAGD with Air Injection

•     Electrical Heating

Rejuvenation and Redevelopment of Mature, Idle, and Abandoned Heavy Oil Fields in Venezuela

Venezuela holds the largest proved crude oil reserves in the world — more than 300 billion barrels — the great majority of it heavy and extra-heavy oil. Most of this resource is concentrated in the Faja Petrolífera del Orinoco (the Orinoco Belt), across its four development areas — Boyacá, Junín, Ayacucho, and Carabobo. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates a mean of 513 billion barrels of technically recoverable heavy oil in the Orinoco Oil Belt Assessment Unit alone, out of an estimated original oil in place ranging from 380 to 652 billion barrels. Under the World Energy Council's classification, heavy oil is defined as having an API gravity below 20°, and extra-heavy oil below 10° API — placing much of the Faja's resource squarely in extra-heavy oil territory.

Separately, Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo/Bolivar Coastal Fields — including the Tia Juana, Lagunillas, and Bachaquero fields — have been the site of some of the industry's largest and longest-running Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) and steamflood developments, dating back to the 1960s. Decades of underinvestment have left many wells across these mature fields, and across the Faja del Orinoco, idle, shut-in, or otherwise underperforming — representing a substantial rejuvenation, redevelopment, and brownfield-reactivation opportunity for operators willing to bring disciplined technical evaluation back to these legacy assets.

•     Idle-well and shut-in-well inventory screening, and ranking of rejuvenation and reactivation candidates, across large legacy field inventories

•     Investigation, identification, and mitigation of steam loss into thief zones — locally known in Venezuela as “Poncheras”

•     Workovers, recompletions, and re-perforation of mature CSS and steamflood wells

•     Infill drilling and CSS/steamflood pattern redesign, for brownfield and legacy-field reactivation

•     Artificial-lift redesign and optimization — including progressive-cavity pumps and electrical submersible pumps (ESPs) — for aging, sand-producing wells

•     Condition assessment and refurbishment planning for aging steam-generation and surface facilities

•     Reservoir characterization and simulation, to re-optimize CSS, steamflood, and SAGD patterns on mature and previously produced assets

•     Economic screening and prioritization of rejuvenation candidates, for field development planning (FDP) and investment decisions

 

Related A&A Service: For A&A's full range of Venezuela oil and gas field and well rejuvenation services, across all recovery methods, please see A&A's Venezuela Fields/Wells Rejuvenation page.

 

Related A&A Service: For A&A's broader heavy and extra-heavy oil resource evaluation, development, and optimization services, please see A&A's Heavy Oil Resources Evaluation, Development and Optimization page.

 

Related A&A Service: For A&A's artificial-lift, sand-control, and cold-production optimization services, please see A&A's Production Optimization page.

Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) Technical Services

CSS remains one of the most widely applied thermal recovery methods for Venezuela's heavy and extra-heavy oil fields, and for shallow, unconsolidated heavy-oil sands worldwide. A&A's CSS technical services include, but are not limited to:

•     CSS candidate screening, and cycle design (inject-soak-produce timing)

•     Modeling of steam propagation, heated radius, and expected incremental oil

•     Steam-additive selection and integration (steam-foam, high-temperature surfactants, solvents)

•     Field-surveillance-plan design (pressures, steam-oil ratio (SOR), tracers, distributed-temperature-sensing (DTS) options)

•     CSS economic evaluation, scenario ranking, and decline-curve-based production forecasting

•     Well-level CSS performance diagnostics, injectivity analysis, and cycle-to-cycle benchmarking

•     Comparative screening of CSS against steamflood and SAGD, as thermal-recovery alternatives, for a given reservoir

Steamflooding Project Support

For reservoirs, and mature CSS assets, where conversion to full-scale steamflooding is technically and economically favored, A&A's steamflooding services include, but are not limited to:

•     Conceptual and numerical modeling of steamflood performance, using industry-standard reservoir-simulation software

•     Pattern design, spacing optimization, and injector-producer pairing and balancing

•     Forecasting of sweep efficiency, conformance issues, steam override, and steam breakthrough

•     Steam allocation and distribution modeling, and steam-generation infrastructure sizing

•     Conversion-strategy planning, from CSS to steamflood, on mature Venezuelan and international heavy-oil assets

•     Full-field steamflood simulation, expansion-area evaluation, and recovery-factor/plateau forecasting

SAGD, SAGD with Air Injection

For deeper, or more challenging, heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs, A&A's thermal/steam EOR consultants also provide screening, design, and simulation support for steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and SAGD with air injection.

Software and Technical Tools

The high-level, seasoned thermal/steam EOR consultants of the A&A Consulting Team are expert users of industry-standard software and technical tools, commonly used for conducting state-of-the-art thermal/steam EOR studies, such as:

•     CMG STARS: for thermal EOR reservoir simulation, and steam-additive modeling

•     CMOST: for optimization, uncertainty, and sensitivity studies

•     Python, MATLAB: for automated analysis and sensitivity workflows

Training and Knowledge Transfer

In addition to providing state-of-the-art consulting, A&A's high-level, seasoned thermal/steam EOR consultants, and subject-matter experts (SMEs), also conduct customized, hands-on training workshops, for the benefit of clients around the world, whenever mutually convenient, including, but not limited to:

•     Practical Engineering Aspects of Thermal EOR

•     Practical Engineering Aspects of Thermal EOR — with emphasis on Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) and Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS)

•     Practical Reservoir Simulation Techniques for Designing, Evaluating, and Optimizing Thermal EOR Projects

The outlines of these customizable training workshops are available on request.

What A&A Delivers

A thermal/steam EOR engagement with the A&A Consulting Team is built around the practical decisions your company needs to make, including, but not limited to:

•     Full technical studies (thermal EOR, CSS, steamflooding, SAGD)

•     Idle-well and shut-in-well reactivation candidate rankings, for mature Venezuelan and international heavy-oil fields

•     State-of-the-art, simulation-driven decision support for field development planning (FDP)

•     Thief-zone (“Ponchera”) investigation and mitigation recommendations

•     Economic evaluation and risk assessment for rejuvenation, redevelopment, and new-project development scenarios

•     High-quality final reports and executive presentations

We can put teams of A&A's high-level, seasoned thermal/steam EOR consultants — with extensive experience in reservoir simulation, facilities and surface systems, and mature-field rejuvenation studies — to work on your company's most challenging thermal/steam EOR projects, in Venezuela and around the world, whenever required.

To find out how we can help your company on its thermal/steam EOR project feasibility and scoping studies, pilot-test design, evaluation and optimization, and heavy oil field rejuvenation programs, in Venezuela and around the world, please contact us.