Publications

Steamflooding is a proven technology for recovering heavy oils from shallow reservoirs. It is now being extended to light oils and deeper reservoirs. Several light oil steamflood projects have been initiated and others are being planned. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of steamflooding technology as applied to light oil reservoirs and gives a rough screening guide for selecting light oil steamflood candidates. It also discusses mechanisms responsible for steamflood oil production from light oil reservoirs.Because a light oil typically has low viscosity and high volatility, light oil steamflooding benefits from mechanisms different than those for the heavy oil case. While oil viscosity reduction is the primary mechanism for production of heavy oils, steam distillation is seen to be mainly responsible for improved production from light oil reservoirs. A computer simulation study is discussed which demonstrated that injected steam effectively distills the crude and forms a light distillate bank ahead of the steam front. The distillate bank then displaces the in-place oil miscibly and thus more effectively. The study further showed that the distillation mechanism alone can add 17-18% incremental oil to the total recovery by steamflooding at economic limit.