ylfink@water.waterloo.edu (ylfink) (02/06/89)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SEMINAR ACTIVITIES SCIENTIFIC COMPUTATION SEMINAR - Thursday, February 9, 1989 Mr. Peter H. Sammon, B.P. Canada Limited, will speak on ``Thermal Reservoir Modelling''. TIME: 1:30 PM ROOM: DC 1304 ABSTRACT BP Canada Limited is part owner of an oil lease at Wolf Lake, in the Cold Lake region of Northeastern Alberta. The target reservoir in the lease is located at a depth of 1500 feet and is nearly 100 feet thick. This single lease is estimated to contain nearly 4 billion barrels of oil. The oil is of a particularly heavy type, and is more properly called bitumen. Bitumen is essentially immobile at reservoir conditions, where it is up to 800,000 times more viscous than water. However, it can be produced if it is heated first. The Wolf lake project currently uses cyclic steam injection as a first attack on the reservoir. This process will ultimately recover about 15-20% of the bitumen in place. Plans call for following up with a new in-situ combustion process. Oxygen will be injected into the steam-heated reservoir, generating more heat and combustion gases in-situ, which will drive bitumen to the production wells. During this talk, some of the modelling considerations involved in thermal reservoir simulation will be reviewed, both theoretically and from an applied viewpoint. A thermal reservoir simulator must take into account multiphase flow of water/oil/gas(steam), and energy. Chemical reactions create solids (coking) and a variety of reaction products. The effects of various modelling choices on the matrix solver and other related issues regarding formulation and stability will be discussed.