Successful heavy oil reservoir management practices are built on analyzing and accurately predicting reservoir behavior over time. Given the complex nature of heavy oil reservoirs, including geomechanical properties and fluid-flow behavior, a need exists to develop a repeatable technique that can account for these complexities within an acceptable margin of accuracy. The objective of the complete paper is to conduct a comprehensive review of recent technologies and work flows developed for heavy oil reservoir management that can be used as a single source of reference for the industry.
Introduction
Because of its comprehensive nature, much of the complete paper is dedicated to a review of the characteristics of heavy oil reservoirs and their exploitation, including thermal and nonthermal methods and the literature dedicated thereto. This synopsis will concentrate on the authors’ reviews of work flows to manage these reservoirs and field applications of the methodologies they review.
Work Flow for Heavy Oil Reservoir Management
Reservoir management is a multidisciplinary field involving detailed analysis of geosciences such as reservoir engineering, geological engineering, and petrophysics.