SPE-169999-MS

In Situ Combustion Technology In The Later SAGD Process In Extra Heavy

Oil Reservoir

M. Desheng, S. Lanxiang, X. Changfeng, L. Xiuluan, and G. Erpeng, Research Institute Of Petroleum

Exploration & Development; Y. Fengxiang, S. Xiaorong, S. Yaoli, and D. Changjun, Research Institute of
Petroleum Exploration & Development, PetroChina Xinjiang Oilfield Company

Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Heavy Oil Conference-Canada held in Alberta, Canada, 10 –12 June 2014.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) enjoys great advantages in the development of extra heavy oil
reservoir such as high oil rate and favarable oil steam ratio. However, there are also disadvantages, such
as intensive energy consumption, produced water recycle and disposal, that have impacts on the
economics of SAGD projects. Furthermore, oil steam ratio declines and water cut rises when the SAGD
comes into its later stage while great residual oil existing in the wedge zone. This paper proposes a new
method, turning to in situ combustion (ISC) in the later SAGD, to improve the performance of the later
SAGD. The feasibility and performance are both studied systematically. Firstly, a numerical model is
established on the basis of reservoir and fluid parameters from a block in Xinjiang oil field, China, and
then the performance characteristics in different stages of SAGD in extra heavy oil are studied.
Particularly, characteristics of performance, features of temperature, pressure, steam chamber, distribution
of residual oil in the later SAGD in extra heavy oil reservoir are deeply characterized. Combining these
features and using physical simulation method, the feasibility of ISC in later SAGD in extra heavy oil
reservoir has been discussed in terms of the effects of the oxidation kinetics characteristics, the thermal
connectivity, the fuel supply, the coke deposit and the combustion front shape of extra heavy oil.
Furthermore, the time when or before the steam chamber spreads to the edge of the SAGD well pair
pattern is determined to be the optimum time to turn to ISC for the typical reservoir. By adding vertical
wells for air injection in the middle of SAGD well pairs is the appropriate well pattern for ISC in the later
SAGD. And perforating in the middle and lower interval is demonstrated to be the better method to control
injection and production. Four stages in the process of ISC performance are determined and dissected. The
study results indicate that stable combustion front shape and high production rate can be achieved after
turning to ISC. Another 50.7% of the OOIP can be obtained in the ISC stage, regardless of 30% oil
recovery in the SAGD stage.
Key words: In situ combustion · SAGD · extra heavy oil · coke deposit · combustion front shape · residual oil
2 SPE-169999-MS

Table 1—Reservoir parameters

Top depth (m) 400 Permeability ⫻ (mD) 1400
Reservoir pressure (MPa) 4 Permeability Z (mD) 1120
Porosity (frac) 0.3 Reservoir temperature (°C) 20
Oil saturation (frac) 0.75 Oil viscosity, RC (mPa.s) 6525765
Pay zone thickness (m) 21 Model dimension (m) 460⫻40⫻21
P well location ( to under-burden layer, m) 1.0 IP well space (m) 5
Well length(m) 400 Well pair space (m) 80

Figure 1—Schematic of SAGD numerical simulation model

Figure 2—SAGD performance profile

Introduction
In situ combustion (ISC) technology has been continuously and deeply developed since the increasing
importance of heavy oil development. ISC has mainly been applied in original and undeveloped reservoirs
at abroad, such as USA, Canada, Romania, India, the Soviet Union (Guan, 2009). In China, ISC
technology is mainly applied for post steam flooding reservoirs, Liaohe oil field and Xinjiang oil field for
example (Zhang, 2000). For most of successful operation experiences, however, the predominant well
pattern is still vertical well pattern (Cui, 2004) with the oil viscosity no more than 5000 mPa.s (Wu, 2007)
for better economical benefit. Considering the low energy consumption and low emission of ISC, it is an
economically potential technology for extra heavy oil with great reserves in place (Greaves, 2008).
SPE-169999-MS 3

Figure 4 —Oil viscosity profile at preheating phase on the 190th d (JK

Figure 3—Temperature profile at preheating phase on the 190th d (JK plane)
plane)
Currently, several kinds of ISC technologies for
extra heavy oil reservoirs, such as COSH (Lau,
1995, Wang 2006) and THAI (Wang, 1998, V,
2009), have been proposed and studied succes-
sively. Nevertheless, they can not yet been applied
in field successfully due to their limits in mecha-
nisms and risks in field operation.
The mature technology in heavy oil development
is still the dual-well steam assisted gravity drainage
(SAGD) technology. Canadian UTF began experi-
menting with successful SAGD development since
Figure 5—Temperature profile at production rising stage on the 430th d
(JK plane) 1995. SAGD has experienced rapid development
after 2000. Fengcheng oilfield in China’s Xinjiang
Province has begun SAGD operation test since 2008, and is currently entering the industrialization
development stage. It is expected to have 300 pairs of SAGD Wells in 2015 with an annual production
of 2.6 million tons of oil. SAGD operations in and outside China have shown that heat loss will increase,
wedge area gravity drainage height will decrease, oil production rate will decline and oil steam ratio will
be low in the later SAGD stage due to the increasing of vapor migration distance. Therefore, new and
effective technical methods needs to be put forward to improve SAGD performance. In this paper, a new
method, namely turning to ISC, to improve the later SAGD performance has been proposed. Combining
the characteristics of production performance, distribution of temperature, pressure, steam chamber and
remaining oil in the dual-well SAGD process, the feasibility of ISC in the later SAGD stage has been
analyzed from the aspects of thermal connectivity, supply of fuel and features of combustion front shape.
And then the corresponding time to turn to ISC, proper well pattern and methods to injection and
production controlling were proposed. The features of ISC in the later SAGD have also been depicted.

1. The feasibility analysis of ISC process in the dual-well SAGD process in

extra heavy oil reservoir
1.1 Characteristics of production performance in the dual horizontal wells SAGD process
Results from physical simulation, numerical simulation and field performance (Ji, 2010, O, 2012, Cai,
2007) show that the development process of dual-well SAGD can be divided into 3 stages, namely the
upward of steam chamber, the horizontal expansion of steam chamber and the downward of steam
chamber, respectively. In the upward stage, the gravity drainage effect is obvious and the heat loss is little
thus the oil rate increases quickly achieving high oil steam ratio. In the expansion and downward stage,
the heat loss increases as the heat energy lost in the overburden and under burden rock. In order to improve
4 SPE-169999-MS

Figure 6 —1.2 Temperature profile at production decline stage on the Figure 7—Oil viscosity profile at production decline stage on the 2320th
2320th d (JK plane) d (JK plane)

the performance in the later SAGD stage (the ex-

pansion stage and the downward stage), some new
methods, such as SAGP and ES-SAGD, have been
put forward successively (S, 2000, Zhao, 2008).
However, those methods are either low in recovery
factor or low economic benefits.
In order to analyze the feasibility of ISC process
in the later SAGD stage in extra heavy oil, a flexible
well SAGD model is established on the basis of
actual reservoir parameters (Table 1), and well pat-
tern from a block in Xinjiang oilfield. The estab-
Figure 8 —Oil saturation profile at production decline stage on the
2320th d (JK plane)
lished flexible well SAGD model (Figure 1), can be
used to simulation the full process of well bore
temperature, pressure, circulation pre-heating, and the whole well bore simulation in the production stage.
The model is a half element of symmetry with the dimension of 46 ⫻ 40 ⫻21, and the block size is 10m,
1m and 1m for DX, DY, DZ respectively. Two semi-symmetric horizontal wells exist in the model, the
upper one for injection and the lower one for production.
Figure 2 shows the production profile from the SAGD numerical simulation. It can be found that the
production of SAGD can be divided into four stages, namely pre-heating stage, production rising stage,
stable production stage and production declining stage. These four stages are closely related to the
developed steam chamber’s shape. The pre-heating stage corresponds to the thermal connectivity between
two horizontal wells, the production rising stage corresponds to the upward of steam chamber, the stable
production stage corresponds to the expansion of the steam chamber and the production decline stage
corresponds to the downward of steam chamber.
It can be seen clearly from Figure 2 that oil rate in the pre-heating stage is small and the water cut is
extremely high (⬍95%). The reason is that large heat is needed to be injected in this stage to achieve
thermal connectivity between the two horizontal well and the steam is cooled into condensate water and
flows to well bore. After 190 days of pre-heating, the temperature between horizontal wells is higher than
120°C (Figure 3) and the oil viscosity is less than 500mPa.s (Figure 4), indicating that thermal
connectivity has been established and SAGD production can be operated.
In the production stage, steam chamber grows (Figure 5). Correspondingly, oil rate increases fast and
water cut decreases sharply (Figure 2). In this stage, heated oil flows down by gravity and flows to
production well. As the drainage height increased, the oil rate increases accordingly. The production rising
stage lasted to the 490th day when the steam chamber propagated to the top of the pay zone (Figure 5).
SPE-169999-MS 5

Figure 9 —Oil saturation change by different displacing medium and different temperature versus injected PV

Figure 10 —Well pattern for ISC in the later SAGD process

The features of this stage are high oil production speed, low water cut and high oil steam ratio. In the end
of the stage, the oil rate is 22.74m3/d, water cut is 84% and oil steam ratio is 0.175.
As the steam chamber got to the top pay zone, it starts to expand horizontally, as such the heat loss
grows (S, 2000), and the oil rate decreases after a period time of stable. As can be seen in Figure 2, in
the 430th-1300th day, oil rate and oil steam ration are both stable, being 25 m3/d and 0.2 respectively.
Between the 1300th day and the 2320th day when the steam chamber gets to the edge of the well pattern
(Figure 6), oil rate began to decrease. In the 2320th day, the oil rate is 22.04 m3/d and the oil steam ration
is 0.145. Compared to 0.20⫹ in the stable stage, oil steam ratio declined 30%. To sum up, the SAGD
process has lasted 2320 days in this simulation, with oil recovery being 30.16% and water cut being
87.23%.
1.2 The feasibility of ISC in the later SAGD process
In extra heavy oil reservoir, the biggest difficulty for ISC operation is that extra heavy oil has no mobility
thus can not be displaced directly to continuously combustion. Currently, there are mainly two methods
to solve the problem. The first one is to inject steam or other thermal media to heat extra heavy oil in order
to make it flow. The second one is to in situ heat the extra heavy oil to make it flow and to achieve short
distance displacement, such as THAI proposed currently. But THAI is hard to control the oxygen
breakthrough in field operation (Niu, 2002). In the middle and later SAGD process, oil rate is going to
decrease, water cut will be high and oil steam ratio will be low which means poor economical benefit.
However, ISC technology has the merits of high oil displacement efficiency and low energy consumption.
It is beneficial to turn SAGD to ISC as early as possible in the terms of improving economical benefit as
6 SPE-169999-MS

Figure 11—Schematic of ISC numerical simulation model

Table 2—Parameters of 7 components

Parameters Components Water Heavy oil Light oil CO2 N2/CO O2 Coke

Molecular weight CMM 18 590 96 44 28 32 13

Critical pressure, KPa PCRIT -- 1024.59 3138.04 7376.5 3394.4 5049.8 \
Critical temperature, °C TCRIT -- 766.14 270.05 31.05 ⫺146.95 ⫺118.4 \
Equilibrium constant KV1 -- --- 3.54E⫹06 8.62E⫹08 \ \ \
KV4 -- --- ⫺3818.2 ⫺3103.39 \ \ \
KV5 -- --- ⫺273.15 ⫺272.99 \ \ \

Figure 12—Experimental curves for thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetry of oil sand sample in research area

well as oil recovery. However, steam chamber had not yet come to the edge of well pattern if SAGD is
turned to ISC too early, thus thermal connectivity had not yet established between SAGD well pairs and
the mobility of oil in this region would be poor. Therefore, it is unable to form a reasonable and effective
well pattern for ISC. According to the temperature field and oil viscosity field from SAGD simulation
(Figure 5, Figure 7) in the middle and late SAGD process, the reservoir has formed thermal connectivity
when the steam chamber comes to the edge of the well space ( As shown in Figure 5, temperature in the
SPE-169999-MS 7

Table 3—Parameters of reaction kinetics

Equation Pre-exponent1/(kPa·d) Activation energy/(J·molⴚ1)

Heavy oil cracking 3.02⫻106 63828.7

Light oil oxidation 3.02⫻106 83828.7
Coke combustion 8.17⫻105 58615.2

Table 4 —Comparison of perforation patterns

Perforating type Time (day) Oil recovery(%) Water cut(%) Cumulative air oil ratio Oil rate (m3/d)

Middle and upper 1430 50.66 38.2 2664 50.36

Middle and lower 1249 40.08 39.3 2541 52.44

Figure 13—ISC performance profile

steam chamber is higher than 200°C and higher than 120°C in the steam chamber front). Thus the oil has
certain mobility with 85% of oil has the oil viscosity low than 5,000mPa.s (Figure 7). The pressure,
temperature and saturation at this time all provide necessary conditions for ISC.
Results from one-dimensional physical simulation flooding experiments show that when cumulative
steam injected achieves 9 PV and the temperature of the injected steam is 240°C, steam flooding
remaining oil saturation can be still more than 0.16 (Figure 9). When steam chamber expands to the edge
of well pattern the recovery is normally 30% with the cumulative steam injected in the order of 1 PV.
According to the distribution of oil saturation in remaining oil area, even in the area near the injection well
where has been repeatedly swept by steam can have oil saturation higher than 0.18 (Figure 6), which is
close to the one-dimension physical simulation experiment. Therefore, the remaining oil can meet the
demand of fuel supply for ISC, considering the fuel consumption is generally 5%-10% of the initial crude
oil.
Based on the analysis above, it can be concluded that thermal connectivity has formed in the reservoir
when the steam chamber expands to the edge of the well pattern, and the oil has certain mobility for the
displacement in ISC. At the same time, the remaining oil in the reservoir can meet the demand of fuel
supply in ISC. Combustion front can be stable with continuous air injection. Therefore, the favorable time
for turning to ISC can be at the time when the steam chamber expands to the edge of the well pattern (on
2320th day of SAGD process).
8 SPE-169999-MS

Figure 15—Water saturation field of fire flooding on the 190th d

Figure 14 —Water saturation field of fire flooding on the 60th d

1.3 Well pattern for ISC after SAGD

As the oil saturation field shown in Figure 6, the
wedge shape area between the horizontal well pair
is enriched with remaining oil, indicating favorable
place to drill vertical wells for ISC. Figure 10 is the
well pattern designed for ISC after SAGD. In this
well pattern, the vertical well between SAGD well
pairs can be used as air injection well with well
space of 80m, and horizontal wells can be used as
Figure 16 —O2 mole fraction field of fire flooding on the 60th d (JK
plane)
production wells. In this well pattern, vertical wells
are in the high oil saturation area and thus it is easy
to successfully ignite. In addition, the vertical observation wells in the SAGD process can be used as air
injection wells, which will reduce drilling cost.

2. The performance characteristics of ISC in the later SAGD

2.1 Numerical simulation model for ISC
In order to reduce the run time in the simulation, 1/10 SAGD model was extracted for ISC simulation. The
extracted model is 40 m⫻40 m ⫻21 m in dimension (Figure 11). The start temperature field, pressure
field, oil saturation field for ISC are corresponding to that of the 2320th day of the SAGD process. In
addition, 7 components was given in the ISC model according to the crude oil composition analysis
results. The parameters of each component is shown in Table 2.
According to the oxidation kinetics characteristics of the crude oil sample in the research area, the extra
heavy oil showed very good combustion characteristics. As Figure 12 shown, there are mainly four
reaction zones for the oil sand sample in this block. (1) In the temperature range lower than 320°C,
distillation is dominant. It is controlled by the change of phase behavior and dominated by light oil
distillation and volatile through absorption of heat. (2) In the temperature range between 320°C and
390°C, the mass lost continues and heat flow curve has an exothermic peak, indicating oxidation reactions
among oil and oxygen in this temperature range. Whereas, heat flow value is small, implying small heat
quantity. Judging from the fluctuation of heat flow curve and the mass loss rate curve, the reaction process
is very complicated in this temperature range. Oxidation reaction may be associated with cracking process
of crude oil. (3) In the temperature range between 390°C and 450°C, the mass lost continues, and the lost
rate rises. Heat flow curve values remain relatively stable, releasing a few amount of heat. Comprehensive
analysis indicates that thermal cracking reaction is the dominant reaction in this temperature range, partial
light components after cracking separate (volatile) from the sample in the condition of high temperature.
Heavy component, namely coke, is preserved. (4) In the temperature range between 450°C and 500°C,
there is a big reduction in the mass percentage curve and its corresponding mass lost rate is slightly less
SPE-169999-MS 9

Figure 17—O2 mole fraction field of fire flooding on the 490th d (JK Figure 18 —O2 mole fraction field of fire flooding on the 1430th d (JK
plane) plane)

than that of the previous temperature range. Heat

flow curve has an obvious exothermic peak, impli-
cating that there are strenuous oxidation reactions
with great heat release in this temperature range and
the deposit, namely coke, burnt in the high temper-
ature.
Furthermore, according to the analysis result of
crude oil oxidation kinetics parameters in the re-
search area, 4 chemical reaction equations are set as
followed.

Figure 19 —Temperature field of fire flooding on the 1430th d (1) Heavy Oil ¡ Light Oil ⫹ Coke ⫹Energy
(2) Coke ⫹ O2 ¡H2O ⫹ CO2/CO⫹Energy
(3) Heavy oil ⫹ O2 ¡H2O ⫹ CO2/CO ⫹ Energy
(4) Light oil ⫹ O2¡H2O ⫹ CO2/CO⫹ Energy
The activation energy and pre-exponent for each reaction equation are shown in Table 3.
2.2 Performance characteristics of ISC in the later SAGD
2.2.1 Perforating optimization: Theoretical researches and field actual studies (Zhang, 2005, Guan,
2011) have shown that in the ISC process, gas is easy to migrate upward, resulting in gas overriding
phenomenon by gravity difference. The reservoir which has experienced SAGD development has higher
temperature in the upper steam chamber thus fluid can have higher mobility there. And this will cause that
combustion front is easy to form in the upper reservoir and in the steam chamber, making the overriding
phenomenon worse. Casing perforation pattern of the air injection well has great influence on the
development of the combustion front. To compare the effect of different casing perforation patterns, two
types of casing perforation patterns were simulated in this research. As shown in Table 4, perforating in
the middle and lower interval of the reservoir has an obvious better performance than that of perforating
in the middle and upper interval of the reservoir, offering a more 181 days of life and a more 10.58% of
recovery. The reason is that gas overriding can be eased when perforating in the middle and lower interval
of the reservoir. Additionally, keeping the reservoir pressure in balance by increasing the injection rate and
production rate of gas can make the combustion front more uniform and more stable.
2.2.2 Characteristics of performance in the ISC process: As the production profile shown in Figure
13, the production of ISC can also be divided into four stages. The first stage is the water drainage stage
lasting 60 days or so. In this stage, secondary water generated in the SAGD process (Figure 14) was
displaced by the flue gas. The water saturation was in the order of 0.4 and the water cut was high in the
beginning. After 60 days of ISC, it came to the second stage, namely taking effect stage. As shown in
Figure 13, the second stage is between the 60th day and the 200th day of the ISC process. In this stage,
10 SPE-169999-MS

most of the secondary water had been displaced out

and oil rate rose continuously, the water saturation
near the production well was about 0.2. The third
one is the stable production stage. It is correspond-
ing to the 200th day to 960th day of the ISC process.
In this stage, air was stably injected and the coke
burnt in high temperature. The average oil produc-
tion rate is 60.44 m3/d with a peak rate of 78.4 m3/d
which is 2.53 times higher than that of SAGD. In
this stage, the production water in production well
was mainly generated from combustion reaction
with a low and stable water cut. The fourth stage is
Figure 20 —Oil saturation field of fire flooding on the 1430th d
the production decline stage. As the combustion
front moves toward the production well, liquid
production decreased and gas liquid ratio increased. In addition, O2 was produced gently. Therefore, air
injection rate was reduced to decrease reservoir pressure and also for safety consideration. In this stage,
heated oil was mainly produced by the depletion of reservoir energy. When the oxygen mole fraction near
the production well achieved a certain level, the production well was shut in. In total, the cumulative air
oil ratio is 2664m3/m3, the oil recovery in the ISC process is 50.66% with a production life of 1430 days.
With the 30.16% in the SAGD process, the ultimate oil recovery of the reservoir is 80.82%.
According the development of the combustion front, combustion front was firstly easy to develop in
the steam chamber area and then get to the upward of dual-well and then go down, indicating severe gas
overriding. However, thanks to the sufficient fuel and high temperature in the steam chamber after SAGD
process, high temperature combustion reaction still can be sustained and give out great heat energy.
Oxygen was consumed effectively in the reservoir though combustion front developed quickly in the
steam chamber. As can be seen in Figure 18, 90% of the reservoir had been burnt when O2 broke through
production well. Moreover, temperature in the mid & lower of reservoir was high (Figure 19), oil
saturation was low (Figure 20) when O2 broke through, meaning that oil had been mostly produced.

3. Conclusions
(1) The production performance of dual-well SAGD has been analyzed. The feasibility of ISC in the
later SAGD process in extra heavy oil reservoir has been demonstrated in terms of thermal
connectivity, fuel supply and features of combustion front.
(2) According to typical performance of SAGD process in the extra heavy oil reservoir, ISC process
should be operated as soon as requirements for ISC are met. The proposed well pattern for the
research block is to arrange a row of vertical air injection wells between previous SAGD well pairs
and to have the dual horizontal wells be production wells.
(3) Four stages can be divided in the ISC process after SAGD process, namely water drainage stage,
taking effect stage, stable production stage and production decline stage, respectively.
(4) After turning to ISC, the combustion front can be stable as such oil recovery rate has been increased
significantly. With 50.62% of OOIP in the ISC stage, the ultimate oil recovery for the reservoir can
be more than 80%.

Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge Research Institute Of Petroleum Exploration & Development (Beijing, China)
for the permission to publish this paper.
SPE-169999-MS 11

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