Enhanced Oil Recovery Planning for the Luckey Ditch Field

This project has been prepared by Team 5 to satisfy the requirements of the Petroleum Engineering Senior Design course. The design plan will be described for the Luckey Ditch Field in southwestern Wyoming, which will undergo an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) simulation of this team's design. The problem statement given to the team required the selection of a field in the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) database with appropriate data to characterize the reservoir. Additionally, a simulation was expected to be performed in order to develop an optimum EOR scenario. By Team 5's definition, an optimum EOR scenario should be determined through economic analysis of increased oil and gas production weighed against additional costs of the EOR equipment purchase and recurring expenditures. Additionally, safety, environmental impact, and practical industry feasibility will all contribute to the selection criteria for choosing an optimal EOR scenario for the Luckey Ditch Field. The primary focus of the planning report delivered at the end of the fall semester was to design a plan to organize tasks to be completed for project success. The initial given data was analyzed, including well logs, production values for oil, gas and water, and many types of geologic data. Then a risk analysis evaluated the potential hazards to the overall success the project. Planning tools, such workflow diagrams and Gantt charts were developed to clearly define and schedule the completion of specific tasks, such as building static models and preparing research about the compatibility requirements of EOR mechanisms. The spring semester included the completion of a static model that shows geologic data, such as formation depths from well tops and log property distributions. Due to data limitations from scanned, antiquated logs provided from the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission database, a statistical approach was chosen to implement the selected EOR recovery data, including typical recovery enhancement percentages over primary production estimates and performance in similar fields, into the existing production decline curves. Thermal EOR methods were ruled out based on the large depth of the Luckey Ditch's producing formation, the Dakota formation. The gas cap expansion drive mechanism in the reservoir would likely benefit from gas injection for pressure maintenance and oil mobility control, such as CO2 or N2. At this time, CO2 and N2 injection scenarios are being evaluated using EOR mechanism property analysis, mainly comparing the reservoir data to previous successful EOR reservoir data in lookup tables. Additional conclusions about the volumetric production and economic effects of the selected EOR scenario will be evaluated