Enhanced hydrocarbon recovery by in situ combustion of oil sand formations

This application is a continuation of copending U.S. application Ser. No. 11/626,175, which is a continuation-in-part of copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/363,540, filed Feb. 27, 2006, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/277,308, filed Mar. 27, 2006, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/277,775, filed Mar. 29, 2006, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/277,815, filed Mar. 29, 2006, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/277,789, filed Mar. 29, 2006, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/278,470, filed Apr. 3, 2006, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/379,123, filed Apr. 24, 2006.

The present invention generally relates to the enhanced recovery of petroleum fluids from the subsurface by the injection of an oxygen enriched gas into the oil sand formation for in situ combustion of the viscous heavy oil and bitumen in situ, and more particularly to a method and apparatus to extract a particular fraction of the in situ hydrocarbon reserve by controlling the access to the in situ bitumen, the rate and growth of the combustion front, the flue gas composition, the flow of produced hydrocarbons through a hot zone containing a catalyst for promoting in situ hydrodesulfurization and thermal cracking, the operating reservoir pressures of the in situ process, thus resulting in increased production and quality of the produced petroleum fluids from the subsurface formation as well as limiting water inflow into the process zone.

Heavy oil and bitumen oil sands are abundant in reservoirs in many parts of the world such as those in Alberta, Canada, Utah and California in the United States, the Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, Indonesia, China, and Russia. The hydrocarbon reserves of the oil sand deposit is extremely large in the trillions of barrels, with recoverable reserves estimated by current technology in the 300 billion barrels for Alberta, Canada and a similar recoverable reserve for Venezuela. These vast heavy oil (defined as the liquid petroleum resource of less than 20° API gravity) deposits are found largely in unconsolidated sandstones, being high porosity permeable cohensionless sands with minimal grain to grain cementation. The hydrocarbons are extracted from the oils sands either by mining or in situ methods.

The heavy oil and bitumen in the oil sand deposits have high viscosity at reservoir temperatures and pressures. While some distinctions have arisen between tar and oil sands and between bitumen and heavy oil, these terms will be used interchangeably herein. The oil sand deposits in Alberta, Canada extend over many square miles and vary in thickness up to hundreds of feet thick. Although some of these deposits lie close to the surface and are suitable for surface mining, the majority of the deposits are at depth ranging from a shallow depth of 150 feet down to several thousands of feet below ground surface. The oil sands located at these depths constitute some of the world\'s largest presently known petroleum deposits. The oil sands contain a viscous hydrocarbon material, commonly referred to as bitumen, in an amount that ranges up to 15% by weight. Bitumen is effectively immobile at typical reservoir temperatures. For example at 15° C., bitumen has a viscosity of ˜1,000,000 centipoise. However at elevated temperatures the bitumen viscosity changes considerably to be ˜350 centipoise at 100° C. down to ˜10 centipoise at 180° C. The oil sand deposits have an inherently high permeability ranging from ˜1 to 10 Darcy, thus upon heating, the heavy oil becomes mobile and can easily drain from the deposit.

In situ methods of hydrocarbon extraction from the oil sands consist of cold production, in which the less viscous petroleum fluids are extracted from vertical and horizontal wells with sand exclusion screens, CHOPS (cold heavy oil production system) cold production with sand extraction from vertical and horizontal wells with large diameter perforations thus encouraging sand to flow into the well bore, CSS (cyclic steam stimulation) a huff and puff cyclic steam injection system with gravity drainage of heated petroleum fluids using vertical and horizontal wells, steamflood using injector wells for steam injection and producer wells on 5 and 9 point layout for vertical wells and combinations of vertical and horizontal wells, SAGD (steam assisted gravity drainage) steam injection and gravity production of heated hydrocarbons using two horizontal wells, VAPEX (vapor assisted petroleum extraction) solvent vapor injection and gravity production of diluted hydrocarbons using horizontal wells, and the THAI (toe heel air injection), a vertical injector well located near the base of a horizontal producer well for an in situ combustion process, and combinations of these methods.

Cyclic steam stimulation and steamflood hydrocarbon enhanced recovery methods have been utilized worldwide, beginning in 1956 with the discovery of CSS, huff and puff or steam-soak in Mene Grande field in Venezuela and for steamflood in the early 1960s in the Kern River field in California. These steam assisted hydrocarbon recovery methods including a combination of steam and solvent are described, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,852 to Woods et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,559 to Best, U.S. Pat. No. 4,519,454 to McMillen, U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,642 to Vogel, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,708,759 to Leaute et al. The CSS process raises the steam injection pressure above the formation fracturing pressure to create fractures within the formation and enhance the surface area access of the steam to the bitumen. Successive steam injection cycles reenter earlier created fractures and thus the process becomes less efficient over time. CSS is generally practiced in vertical wells, but systems are operational in horizontal wells, but have complications due to localized fracturing and steam entry and the lack of steam flow control along the long length of the horizontal well bore.

Descriptions of the SAGD process and modifications are described, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,485 to Butler, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,146 to Sanchez and thermal extraction methods in U.S. Pat. No. 4,085,803 to Butler, U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,570 to Vandergrift, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,116,275 to Butler et al. The SAGD process consists of two horizontal wells at the bottom of the hydrocarbon formation, with the injector well located approximately 10-15 feet vertically above the producer well. The steam injection pressures exceed the formation fracturing pressure in order to establish connection between the two wells and develop a steam chamber in the oil sand formation. Similar to CSS, the SAGD method has complications, albeit less severe than CSS, due to the lack of steam flow control along the long section of the horizontal well and the difficulty of controlling the growth of the steam chamber.

A thermal steam extraction process referred to a HASDrive (heated annulus steam drive) and modifications thereof are described to heat and hydrogenate the heavy oils in situ in the presence of a metal catalyst, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,994,340 to Anderson et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,345 to Hsueh, U.S. Pat. No. 4,706,751 to Gondouin, U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,551 to Duerksen, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,003 to Duerksen. It is disclosed that at elevated temperature and pressure the injection of hydrogen or a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to the heavy oil in situ in the presence of a metal catalyst will hydrogenate and thermal crack at least a portion of the petroleum in the formation.

Thermal recovery processes using steam require large amounts of energy to produce the steam, using either natural gas or heavy fractions of produced synthetic crude. Burning these fuels generates significant quantities of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Also, the steam process uses considerable quantities of water, which even though may be reprocessed, involves recycling costs and energy use. Therefore a less energy intensive oil recovery process is desirable.

Solvents applied to the bitumen soften the bitumen and reduce its viscosity and provide a non-thermal mechanism to improve the bitumen mobility. Hydrocarbon solvents consist of vaporized light hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, or butane or liquid solvents such as pipeline diluents, natural condensate streams, or fractions of synthetic crudes. The diluent can be added to steam and flashed to a vapor state or be maintained as a liquid at elevated temperature and pressure, depending on the particular diluent composition. While in contact with the bitumen, the saturated solvent vapor dissolves into the bitumen. This diffusion process is due to the partial pressure difference in the saturated solvent vapor and the bitumen. As a result of the diffusion of the solvent into the bitumen, the oil in the bitumen becomes diluted and mobile and will flow under gravity. The resultant mobile oil may be deasphalted by the condensed solvent, leaving the heavy asphaltenes behind within the oil sand pore space with little loss of inherent fluid mobility in the oil sands due to the small weight percent (5-15%) of the asphaltene fraction to the original oil in place. Deasphalting the oil from the oil sands produces a high grade quality product by 3°-5° API gravity. If the reservoir temperature is elevated the diffusion rate of the solvent into the bitumen is raised considerably being two orders of magnitude greater at 100° C. compared to ambient reservoir temperatures of ˜15° C.

Solvent assisted recovery of hydrocarbons in continuous and cyclic modes are described including the VAPEX process and combinations of steam and solvent plus heat, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,450,913 to Allen et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,819 to Islip et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,407,009 to Butler et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,607,016 to Butler, U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,274 to Frauenfeld et al, U.S. Pat. No. 6,318,464 to Mokrys, U.S. Pat. No. 6,769,486 to Lim et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,883,607 to Nenniger et al. The VAPEX process generally consists of two horizontal wells in a similar configuration to SAGD; however, there are variations to this including spaced horizontal wells and a combination of horizontal and vertical wells. The startup phase for the VAPEX process can be lengthy and take many months to develop a controlled connection between the two wells and avoid premature short circuiting between the injector and producer. The VAPEX process with horizontal wells has similar issues to CSS and SAGD in horizontal wells, due to the lack of solvent flow control along the long horizontal well bore, which can lead to non-uniformity of the vapor chamber development and growth along the horizontal well bore.

Direct heating and electrical heating methods for enhanced recovery of hydrocarbons from oil sands have been disclosed in combination with steam, hydrogen, catalysts, and/or solvent injection at temperatures to ensure the petroleum fluids gravity drain from the formation and at significantly higher temperatures (300° to 400° range and above) to pyrolysis the oil sands. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,780,450 to Ljungström, U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,441 to Ware et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,926,941 to Glandt et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,046,559 to Glandt, U.S. Pat. No. 5,060,726 to Glandt et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,626 to Vinegar et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,854 to Vinegar et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,722,431 to Karanikas et al

In situ combustion processes have been disclosed. See U.S. Pat. No. 4, 454,916 to Shu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,237 to Shu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,566,536 to Holmes et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,598,770 to Shu et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,800 to Venkatesan, U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,490 to Stephens et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,211,230 to Ostapovich et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,273,111 to Brannan et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,897 to Leaute, U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,224 to Laali, U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,191 to Greaves et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,824,214 to Paul et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,871,637 to Brons, U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,946 to Klazinga et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,412,557 to Ayasse et al. Many of these disclosed methods involve in situ combustion of the in situ hydrocarbon deposit with a combination of vertical and horizontal wells. The process involves the injection of an oxygen rich injection gas, igniting the in situ hydrocarbons, either by direct ignition from a standard downhole burner, or from self ignition, and drawing the produced flue gas off to create a gas pressure gradient to control the rate and progress of the combustion front. The difficulties experienced by the various disclosed methods are: 1) initiating connection of the injector, the combustion zone, and producer to get the process started, 2) the potential for a liquid and/or gravity block, i.e. mobile hydrocarbons can not flow to the producer or combustion (flue) gases rise vertically rather than flow to the producer, and 3) the difficulty of raising the temperature of the produced hydrocarbons to initiate some form of hydrodesulfurization and/or thermal cracking. Some of the disclosed processes overcome some of these difficulties by heating a zone and thus connecting the injector and producer prior to injection of the oxygen rich gas injection and ignition of the hydrocarbon formation. Other methods force the produced hydrocarbons to flow through a spent previously combusted zone to raise the temperature to induce some form of cracking process, while others propose placement of a catalyst in the producer well to promote further cracking at the elevated temperatures. The THAI (toe heel air injection) combustion process has been demonstrated in laboratory tests for application to oil sands, involving air injection in a vertical well with the producer being a horizontal well at a deeper depth and the combustion front progressing horizontally along the alignment of the producer and downwards towards the producer.

In situ processes involving downhole heaters are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,634,961 to Ljungström, U.S. Pat. No. 2,732,195 to Ljungström, U.S. Pat. No. 2,780,450 to Ljungström. Electrical heaters are described for heating viscous oils in the forms of downhole heaters and electrical heating of tubing and/or casing, see U.S. Pat. No. 2,548,360 to Germain, U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,960 to Eastlund et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,060,287 to Van Egmond, U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,818 to Van Egmond, U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,554 to Vinegar and U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,819 to Vinegar. Flameless downhole combustor heaters are described, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,742 to Mikus, U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,952 to Vinegar et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,858 to Wellington et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,269 to Wellington et al. Surface fired heaters or surface burners may be used to heat a heat transferring fluid pumped downhole to heat the formation as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,057 to Vinegar et al and U.S. Pat. No. 6,079,499 to Mikus et al.

The thermal and solvent methods of enhanced oil recovery from oil sands, all suffer from a lack of surface area access to the in place bitumen. Thus the reasons for raising steam pressures above the fracturing pressure in CSS and during steam chamber development in SAGD, are to increase surface area of the steam with the in place bitumen. Similarly the VAPEX process is limited by the available surface area to the in place bitumen, because the diffusion process at this contact controls the rate of softening of the bitumen. Likewise during steam chamber growth in the SAGD process the contact surface area with the in place bitumen is virtually a constant, thus limiting the rate of heating of the bitumen. Therefore, the methods, heat and solvent, or a combination thereof, would greatly benefit from a substantial increase in contact surface area with the in place bitumen. Hydraulic fracturing of low permeable reservoirs has been used to increase the efficiency of such processes and CSS methods involving fracturing are described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,852 to Woods et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,626 to Vinegar et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,854 to Vinegar et al. Also during initiation of the SAGD process, overpressurized conditions are usually imposed to accelerated the steam chamber development, followed by a prolonged period of underpressurized condition to reduce the steam to oil ratio. Maintaining reservoir pressure during heating of the oil sands has the significant benefit of minimizing water inflow to the heated zone and to the well bore.

In situ combustion methods all suffer from poor connection between the injected gas location, combustion zone, and producer especially at initiation, and during propagation and growth of the combustion front if barren or shale lenses are present or if the oil sands have intrinsically low vertical permeability. The in situ combustion method would benefit greatly from having good connection between the injected gas location, combustion zone, and the producer both at the initiation configuration and throughout the propagation and growth of the combustion front. Highly permeable vertical propped hydraulic fractures extending radially from the injector would greatly benefit the process by providing a connection to control the rate and growth of the combustion front and thus guide the combustion front radially between the propped fracture system.

Hydraulic fracturing of petroleum recovery wells enhances the extraction of fluids from low permeable formations due to the high permeability of the induced fracture and the size and extent of the fracture. A single hydraulic fracture from a well bore results in increased yield of extracted fluids from the formation. Hydraulic fracturing of highly permeable unconsolidated formations has enabled higher yield of extracted fluids from the formation and also reduced the inflow of formation sediments into the well bore. Typically the well casing is cemented into the bore hole, and the casing perforated with shots of generally 0.5 inches in diameter over the depth interval to be fractured. The formation is hydraulically fractured by injecting the fracture fluid into the casing, through the perforations, and into the formation. The hydraulic connectivity of the hydraulic fracture or fractures formed in the formation may be poorly connected to the well bore due to restrictions and damage due to the perforations. Creating a hydraulic fracture in the formation that is well connected hydraulically to the well bore will increase the yield from the well, result in less inflow of formation sediments into the well bore, and result in greater recovery of the petroleum reserves from the formation.

Turning now to the prior art, hydraulic fracturing of subsurface earth formations to stimulate production of hydrocarbon fluids from subterranean formations has been carried out in many parts of the world for over fifty years. The earth is hydraulically fractured either through perforations in a cased well bore or in an isolated section of an open bore hole. The horizontal and vertical orientation of the hydraulic fracture is controlled by the compressive stress regime in the earth and the fabric of the formation. It is well known in the art of rock mechanics that a fracture will occur in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the minimum stress, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,271,696 to Wood. At significant depth, one of the horizontal stresses is generally at a minimum, resulting in a vertical fracture formed by the hydraulic fracturing process. It is also well known in the art that the azimuth of the vertical fracture is controlled by the orientation of the minimum horizontal stress in consolidated sediments and brittle rocks.