A Single-Well Gas-Assisted Gravity Drainage Enhanced Oil Recovery Process for U.S. Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Operations

The U.S. Deepwater Gulf of Mexico (DGOM) area that has some of the most prolific oil reservoirs is still awaiting the development of a viable enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. Without it, DGOM will remain severely untapped. Exorbitant well costs, in excess of $200 million, preclude having extensive injection patterns, commonly used in EOR design frameworks. Aside from injection patterns, even operationally waterflooding has met with significant challenges because of injectivity issues in these over pressurized turbidities. The gas-assisted gravity drainage (GAGD) EOR process, that holds promise for deepwater environments because of lesser injectivity issues, among others, has been adapted in this work to overcome these limitations. A novel design in the form of a single well—gas assisted gravity drainage (SW-GAGD) process, has been demonstrated to emulate the benefits of a GAGD process in a cost-effective manner. Unlike conventional GAGD processes, which need multiple injectors and separate horizontal production wells, the SW-GAGD process just uses a single well for injection and well production. The performance of the process has been established using partially scaled visual glass models based on dimensional analyses for scale up of the process. The recovery factor has been shown to be in the range of 65–80% in the immiscible mode alone, and the process is orders of magnitude faster than natural gravity drainage. A toe-to-heel configuration of the SW-GAGD process has also been tested and for the configuration to be immune from reservoir layering, the toe of the well should ideally end at the top of the payzone. Better sweep of the payzone and consequent high recovery factor of 80% OOIP was observed, if the heel part of the bottom lateral is located in a lower permeability zone.