Chevron Ignites Steamflood Injection in Saudi

Back in March, Ghawar Guzzler posted a snippet about Chevron embarking on a steamflood injection pilot program in Saudi Arabia's Wafra Field, located in the Neutral Zone, to see if it can unlock potential tens of billions of oil trapped in the Middle East. Now, Chevron announced the program is underway...

The $340 million LSP, which is the final test phase for the steamflood project, is expected to lead to full-field steamflooding of the First Eocene reservoir, marking the first commercial application of a conventional steamflood in a carbonate reservoir anywhere in the world.

"Full-field deployment of steamflood technology in the PNZ would significantly increase recovery of crude oil reserves, confirm the technology's potential applicability in other carbonate oil fields and build on Chevron's steamflood capabilities that date back five decades," said George Kirkland, executive vice president, Chevron Global Upstream and Gas.

The LSP is the third in a series of staged tests to validate the feasibility of applying the enhanced oil recovery technology of steamflooding to unlock the producing potential of the heavy Eocene oil of the PNZ's carbonate reservoirs. Previous tests included the Small Scale Test (SST), which was successfully completed in 2008, and simple steam stimulation testing, conducted in the late 1990s.

Steamflooding involves injecting steam into heavy-oil reservoirs to heat the crude oil underground, reducing its viscosity and allowing its extraction through wells.

Chevron has successfully employed steamflooding to produce heavy oil from sandstone reservoirs at Kern River, Calif., for more than 40 years and at
Duri in Sumatra, Indonesia, for 25 years. The company is recognized as the world's leader in steamflood technology.

- Brewskie

Russia to Help Develop Orinico Belt

Venezuela and five Russian oil companies have signed an agreement to develop Orinoco Belt. Considering "Caesar Chavez's" manhandling of the nation's oil industry has dropped production down to 2.15 mbpd, we'll see how this pans out.

Venezuela agreed to work with a group of five Russian oil companies including Rosneft and Lukoil to create an oil joint venture in areas of the country’s Orinoco Belt, according to an accord published today.

The venture will work in the central and northern parts of the Carabobo 1 Block, according to an agreement signed 26 November and printed today in the Official Gazette, the formal record of Venezuelan government actions.

The accord says Russian National Oil Consortium, or Consorcio Ruso, will be a partner with Venezuela, said a Bloomberg report.

Consorcio Ruso was formed last year to work in Venezuelan oilfields and includes Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz, Gazprom, Lukoil, and TNK-BP.

Venezuela is auctioning minority stakes in the same sections of the Carabobo 1 Block.
Nineteen companies, including Consorcio Ruso, paid $2 million each for data on three proposed projects, one of which would pump 400,000 barrels per day from the same areas described in the treaty.

The accord does not mention the auction.

Other companies that may bid include Chevron, BP and Shell.

- Brewskie

Chevron Looks to Unlock Massive Middle East Oil Reserves

Chevron is pumping hard work and money to prove there's a lot more oil out there to pump than some critics give credit - and they're doing it in the Middle East, in the neutral zone, sandwiched between Kuwait and Arabia.

From the Financial Times:

Chevron, the second-biggest US oil company, will in the next few months begin large-scale testing of a production technique that could unlock tens of billions of barrels of reserves across the Middle East.

The technique, for producing heavy oil that cannot be extracted using conventional methods, will be used in the partitioned neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

[...]

Chevron revealed last month in its annual filing to the US Securities and
exchange Commission that the neutral zone deal had contributed “the majority” of
a 384m barrel increase to the proved oil reserves of the consolidated group.

Without that contribution, additions to its proved oil reserves last year would have fallen well behind the consolidated group’s production of 520m barrels.

Chevron, which makes its annual strategy presentation to analysts on Tuesday, now hopes to add much more than that in reserves of heavy oil that it has not previously been able to extract.

The additional oil accessible in this way could run into the billions of barrels in the neutral zone alone, and there are potentially much larger reserves in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

[...]

Chevron is experienced in producing heavy oil in California and Indonesia using “steamflooding”: injecting steam into the reservoir to warm the oil until it reaches a syrupy consistency and can be pumped out.

Those fields are sandstone, however, while the fields in the neutral zone, like most of the fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are of carbonate rock such as limestone. Steamflooding has never been used in carbonate fields, because the steam would dissolve minerals in the rock, clogging up the reservoir and the wells.

Chevron will engage in a pilot program this summer to see if problems in the Wafra field, located in the neutral zone, can be overcome.

- Brewskie