The Benefits of In Situ Upgrading Reactions to the Integrated Operations of the Orinoco Heavy-Oil Fields and Downstream Facilities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Benefits of In Situ Upgrading Reactions to the Integrated Operations of the Orinoco Heavy-Oil Fields and Downstream Facilities Myron Kuhlman Myron Kuhlman MK Tech Solutions Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Paper presented at the SPE/AAPG Western Regional Meeting, Long Beach, California, June 2000. Paper Number: SPE-62560-MS https://doi.org/10.2118/62560-MS Published: June 19 2000 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Get Permissions Search Site Citation Kuhlman, Myron. "The Benefits of In Situ Upgrading Reactions to the Integrated Operations of the Orinoco Heavy-Oil Fields and Downstream Facilities." Paper presented at the SPE/AAPG Western Regional Meeting, Long Beach, California, June 2000. doi: https://doi.org/10.2118/62560-MS Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll ProceedingsSociety of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)SPE Western Regional Meeting Search Advanced Search AbstractThe value of heavy-oil production is reduced because extra refining is required to market the oil and a diluent may be needed to transport the oil. In some reservoirs, insitu pyrolysis reactions can remove this limitation.The oil in most reservoirs produced by steam-drive is not hot long enough for pyrolysis to drastically change properties of the oil. However, deep, high permeability, thick formations like the Orinoco tar belt offer a new opportunity. When steam is injected at a pressure above 8.93 M Pascal (1300 psi), and the production is constrained, large volumes of 10 API oil can be upgraded underground to 25 API oil. Moreover, production from the reservoir more than doubles, and the coke and sulfur are left underground. Since the viscosity of the produced crude is reduced several orders of magnitude, no diluent would be needed to transport the crude. Finally, much lighter oil arrives at the refinery, so extra investment in distillation and cracking equipment is unnecessary.Thus, in situ upgrading could reduce the investment needed to market heavy oil, generate higher profits and make smaller reservoirs more attractive for development.IntroductionVery large deposits of extra-heavy oil exist. For instance, the Orinoco tar belt1 (Figure 1) contains between 1.3 and 1.8 trillion barrels of lowAPI oil. There are an estimated 4.6 trillion barrels of heavy oil reserves worldwide2. The extra cost of transporting and upgrading heavy oils provides an incentive to evaluate how in situ pyrolysis affects the produced API gravity and downstream operations.For instance, the dead-oil viscosity of 10 API oil is 50,000 to 100,000 cp. This oil needs a diluent, like naphtha or 50 API oil to be transported in a pipeline. This diluent must be distilled from the tar and returned in another pipeline.In addition, the C34+ fraction can be 60% to 80% by weight of these oils. Vacuum distillation and large catalytic cracking equipment are needed in order to convert this "asphalt" into a marketable product. The costs of upgrading equipment and diluent for the pipeline are high. Recent OGJ articles1 on integrated production facilities for the Orinoco Tar belt indicate that facilities to convert 200,000 bpd of 10 API oil to 22-25 API oil will cost several billion $US.Many heavy-oil reservoirs are shallow and are produced at low temperature, so upgrading does not occur there. However, others like Peace River in Canada are deep. High pressure, high temperature steam is injected there, and pyrolysis of the oil has been shown to increase API gravity during steam-soaks3,4. If pyrolysis increases the API gravity enough, the extra costs listed above disappear. This could make steam injection in deeper heavy-oil fields very profitable. The Orinoco tar belt will be used to demonstrate the potential of in situ upgrading because it is so large and very visible.BackgroundUpgrading - Visbreaking reactions have been investigated for years. Numerous investigators3–13 have evaluated oil pyrolysis and its effects on API gravity, viscosity, asphaltenes and resin properties. In addition, they have studied reaction kinetics and the effect of minerals or other additives. In laboratory experiments (or a coker at a refinery) heating of tars degrades asphaltenes, producing light hydrocarbons, a high carbon to hydrogen and carbon to sulfur ratio residue, and some gas. The gas is methane and some hydrogen sulfide. Keywords: situ, enhanced recovery, sagd, upstream oil & gas, heavy oil upgrading, permeability, thermal method, injector, increase production, spe 62560 Subjects: Processing Systems and Design, Improved and Enhanced Recovery, Heavy oil upgrading, Thermal methods This content is only available via PDF. 2000. Society of Petroleum Engineers You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.020 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".