Effect of horizontal heterogeneity on productivity of cyclic superheated steam stimulation horizontal wells: numerical analysis

In recent decades, horizontal well has been widely used for heavy oil recovery. Besides, new developed thermal carriers, such as multi-component thermal fluid and superheated steam, have been proved effective in some oil fields. However, when the length of the horizontal wellbore is quite long or when the reservoir is of serious heterogeneity, the steam fingering phenomenon can be serious. The existence of horizontal heterogeneity leads to the low recovery efficiency and serious steam fingering phenomenon. In this paper, a numerical model is built to study the effect of horizontal heterogeneity on the productivity of production well during the cyclic superheated steam stimulation process. Simulation results show that (a) the effect of permeability distribution pattern in the horizontal direction on the recovery degree can be neglected. This may be caused by the infinity of fluid fluidity in the wellbores. (b) The effect of permeability distribution pattern in the horizontal direction on the cyclic oil production can be neglected. (c) The temperature is the highest in the high permeability section, while the temperature is the lowest in the low permeability section. However, given the fact that the wellbore conductivity is assumed to be infinity, the effect of permeability distribution pattern on the performance of the production well can be neglected.