Seismicity in Nebraska and adjacent states: The historical perspective and current trends

A sudden spike in earthquake events has been observed in central Nebraska. Since April 2018, 26 earthquakes with equivalent moment magnitudes from 2.7 to 4.1 occurred, clustered tightly in Custer County. A similar cluster of 24 earthquakes with equivalent moment magnitudes from 2.6 to 3.7 occurred in Jewell County in northern Kansas in 2017. We have compiled an earthquake database for Nebraska and parts of adjacent states from different sources to determine whether these recent earthquake spikes are consistent with historic seismicity. We identified two historic earthquake clusters occurring in our study area. The first contained 32 events and was active in Red Willow County in southwestern Nebraska from 1977 to 1982. As it coincides spatially with the Sleepy Hollow oil field, it may be related to enhanced oil recovery from that field, although it is also located at the edge of the Chadron-Cambridge Arch. The second historical earthquake cluster is located in Pawnee and Richardson counties in southwestern Nebraska and includes eight earthquakes with equivalent moment magnitudes of 2.3 to 2.8 that occurred in a period from 1982 to 1989 over the Nemaha uplift and appear to be related to the Humboldt fault. We note an increase in both maximum magnitude, as well as in the cumulative seismic moment per cluster with time. We have also used gravity and magnetic fields to map potential basement faults in the study area. Our analysis shows that the two recent earthquake spikes are aligned with the proposed basement faults. Despite this correlation, the cause of this sudden spike in seismicity is not well understood, as the stresses that might reactivate these basement faults are unknown. In addition, both recent clusters are distant from oil and gas operations. More seismic stations are necessary in central Nebraska in order to better detect focal depths and faulting style in the ongoing cluster of earthquakes and investigate possible causes.

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From Biomedical to Oil Industry: Promising Mesoporous Materials for Oil Field Applications

10.2118/205175-ms ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ahmed Wasel Alsmaeil ◽

Mohamed Amen Hammami ◽

Amr Ismail Abdel-Fattah ◽

Mazin Yousef Kanj ◽

Emmanuel P Giannelis

Keyword(s):

Mesoporous Silica ◽

Interfacial Tension ◽

Mesoporous Materials ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles ◽

Exchange Process ◽

Oil Field ◽

Stimuli Responsive ◽

High Salinity Water

Abstract Developing nanocarriers deliver molecules to targeted locations has received widespread attention in different fields ranging from biomedical to oil and gas industries. Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles (MSNs), where the pore size diameter ranges from 2-50 nm, have become attractive in many fields including biomedicine. One advantage is the ability to control the size, morphology of the particles, and the internal and external surfaces properties which enable encapsulating molecules of different size and charges. Moreover, it is possible to functionalize the pores and the surface of the MSNs, which make them suitable to host different molecules and release them in situ in a controlled manner. Despite the numerous studies of MSNs, little has been devoted to subsurface applications. This review will highlight some of the interesting characteristics of MSNs that make them promising carriers of molecules for slow and/or stimuli-responsive delivery for oil field applications. For example, they could be utilized for the controlled release of surfactants for enhanced oil recovery applications to minimize surfactant losses near the well-bore area. The mesoporous materials can be designed to harvest the ions normally present in oil field water, and the high temperatures encountered when travelling deep in the reservoir to release the surfactant. The ion exchange process makes it possible to engineer the MSNs to release their cargo for efficient and stimuli responsive delivery applications. The ion-responsive release was analyzed by the interfacial tension behavior between crude oil and high salinity water (HSW). It is concluded that the interfacial tension could be reduced up to 0.0045 mN/m when the mesoporous silica particles are suspended in HSW in comparison to 0.9 mN/m when suspended in DI water.

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RESEARCH OF THE MECHANISM OF OIL RECOVERY FROM HYDROCARBON DEPOSITS WITH LOW PERMEABILITY RESERVOIRS

Periódico Tchê Química ◽

10.52571/ptq.v17.n34.2020.916_p34_pgs_892_904.pdf ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (34) ◽

pp. 892-904

Author(s):

Zinon A KUANGALIEV ◽

Gulsin S DOSKASIYEVA ◽

Altynbek S MARDANOV

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

New Technologies ◽

High Viscosity ◽

Economic Feasibility ◽

Oil Field ◽

Low Permeability ◽

Low Grade ◽

Oil Reserves ◽

Low Permeability Reservoirs

The main part of Russia's hard-to-recover reserves is 73% for low-grade and carbonate reservoirs, 12% for high-viscosity oil, about 15% of extensive sub-gas zones of oil and gas deposits and 7% of reservoirs lying at great depths. The development of such stocks with the usage of traditional technologies is economically inefficient. It requires the application of new technologies for their development and fundamentally new approaches to design, taking into account the features of extraction of hard-to-extract reserves (HtER). The purpose of this research is to find ways to improve the performance of low-permeability reservoirs. To accomplish this task, the Novobogatinsk South-Eastern Oil Field has been taken as an example and described. The necessary properties of production facilities in the field are highlighted, along with economic feasibility and technological efficiency. The reserves involved in the development are determined and, thanks to the knowledge of the geological oil reserves of the deposits, the potential oil recovery factor is calculated with the existing development technology. As a result of the research, development options were worked out with the results of the calculation of design indicators for the field as a whole. The comparison of oil recovery schedules and ORI, as well as the layout of wells, have been presented. As a result of the study, a description of 3 options for the development of design indicators for the field as a whole is given. The figures show oil production graphs, as well as location patterns. The authors of the study conclude which of the recommended development options can help extract maximum oil reserves.

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Review of Oilfield Chemicals Used in Oil and Gas Industry

Asian Journal of Physical and Chemical Sciences ◽

10.9734/ajopacs/2021/v9i230132 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 8-24

Author(s):

M. Chukunedum Onojake ◽

T. Angela Waka

Keyword(s):

Natural Gas ◽

Crude Oil ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Drilling Fluid ◽

Petroleum Industry ◽

Oil And Gas Industry ◽

Oil Field ◽

Wide Range ◽

Oilfield Chemicals

The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation and marketing of natural gas, crude oil and refined petroleum products. The oil industry demands more sophisticated methods for the exploitation of petroleum. As a result, the use of oil field chemicals is becoming increasingly important and has received much attention in recent years due to the vast role they play in the recovery of hydrocarbons which has enormous commercial benefits. The three main sectors of the petroleum industry are Upstream, Midstream and Downstream. The Upstream deals with exploration and the subsequent production (drilling of exploration wells to recover oil and gas). In the Midstream sector, petroleum produced is transported through pipelines as natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids. Downstream sector is basically involved in the processing of the raw materials obtained from the Upstream sector. The operations comprises of refining of crude oil, processing and purifying of natural gas. Oil field chemicals offers exceptional applications in these sectors with wide range of applications in operations such as improved oil recovery, drilling optimization, corrosion protection, mud loss prevention, drilling fluid stabilization in high pressure and high temperature environment, and many others. Application of a wide range of oilfield chemicals is therefore essential to rectify issues and concerns which may arise from oil and gas operational activities. This review intends to highlight some of the oil field chemicals and their positive applications in the oil and gas Industries.

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To the experience of Shkapovo oilfield development

Georesursy ◽

10.18599/grs.2019.4.119-122 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 119-122

Author(s):

Evgeny V. Lozin

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

High Performance ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Construction Material ◽

Oil Field ◽

Public Works ◽

Centrifugal Pumps ◽

Oil Reserves ◽

Large Platform ◽

Capital Construction

The article formulates the main conclusions about the development of a large Shkapovsky oil field with an emphasis on the results of the development of the main objects – horizons DI and DIV of the terrigenous Devonian. The field was commissioned following the neighboring Tuimazinsky and Serafimovsky fields, taking into account the experience of a scientifically organized system for the development of these large platform oil fields in the Volga-Ural oil and gas region. It is shown that this experience was not taken into account much, especially in relation to the unsecured needs of oil production with capital construction, material and technical supply and social facilities. The potential of the field was realized in 18 years. Intra-contour and focal flooding, production technologies using electric centrifugal pumps (ESP), chemicalization of oil extraction processes, primary collection and transportation of products, oil, gas and water treatment technologies, etc., accelerated the development. Shkapov engineers and scientists own a number of innovations: realizing high development rates, means of preventing and eliminating salt-paraffin deposits, the introduction of double-barrel drilling, the development of high-performance ESPs, separate development of facilities, etc. At the same time, tasks were solved on eliminating ecological imbalance in the bowels and the environment, housing and public works. The current urgent problem of the field’s additional development is the activation of the production of residual oil reserves from oil and watered zones drilled with an unreasonably rare grid of wells. The final oil recovery coefficients of the Devonian objects are expected to be high, but, according to the author of the article, could reach CU 0.6.

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Managing limited subsurface data in a mature oil field case study: extending the production lifetime of a 50-year-old oil field in Indonesia: Rantau oil field Waterflood Pilot Project

The APPEA Journal ◽

10.1071/aj12100 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 489

Author(s):

Reza Ardianto

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil Production ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Oil Field ◽

Oil Fields ◽

Water Flooding ◽

Peak Oil ◽

Screening Criteria ◽

The Government

Business management of oil and gas in Pertamina State Oil enterprises was handed to one of its subsidiaries: Pertamina EP (PEP). With a vast working area of 140,000 km2, it consists of 214 fields where 80% is an old field (mature field or brown field). Most of these oil fields were discovered during Dutch colonialism. One of these fields was Rantau oil field, discovered in 1928; it is considered one of potential structure at the time. Peak oil production was achieved at 31,711 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) (wc 17.2%) in 1969, and it is still producing 2,500 BOPD from primary stage.To get better recovery from the Rantau oil field, it is necessary to identify the potential of secondary recovery water-flooding. Some screening criteria had been completed to select an appropriate method that could be applied in the Rantau field. PEP is preparing an Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) program to be applied in some oil fields with subsurface and surface potential consideration. The implementation was initiated by the EOR Department at PEP. The issue of the national oil production increasing program from the government has to be realised by the EOR Department at Pertamina EP. Following the national oil increasing program, management of PEP urged to increase oil production in a rapid and realistic way. As a result, the program of secondary and tertiary recovery pilot project should be conducted simultaneously by the EOR Department on some of the fields that have passed their peak. On the other hand, PEP has only limited geology, geophysics, reservoir, and production (GGRP) data, and most of the oil fields have been producing since 1930s. The conditions that have to be dealt with are as follows: production from the existing field is declining, data is collected and interpreted during a long period, huge amounts of production data, and reservoir model and simulation do not exist and are not frequently updated. Based on this, the planning of EOR struggled due to length of time needed versus the need for quick development. It has become much more of a challenge for the team consisting of integrated geophysics, geology, reservoir, production, process facility, project management and economic evaluation. This extended abstract presents the term of managing limited GGRP data that contributes to the successful pilot waterflood project in the Rantau field. It also explains the uses of limited subsurface GGRP data to overcome the uncertainty for planning of the waterflood pilot project in the Rantau field, as a part of planning using limited data.

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The use of data on capillary pressures in the development of deposits in the Middle Ob region

Oil and Gas Studies ◽

10.31660/0445-0108-2021-4-61-72 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 61-72

Author(s):

I. G. Sabanina ◽

T. V. Semenova ◽

Yu. Ya. Bolshakov ◽

S. V. Vorobjeva

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil Field ◽

Oil Fields ◽

The West ◽

Injection Wells ◽

Stage Of Development ◽

Urgent Task ◽

Capillary Pressures ◽

Water Cut

Currently, most of the oil fields in the West Siberian oil and gas province are in the final stage of development. There is water-cut in production, a decrease in oil production, and the structure of residual reserves deteriorates. The search and application of the most successful scientific methods and technologies for improving oil recovery in the development of fields is quite an urgent task.It should be taken into account that hydrophobic reservoirs are common in the oil fields of Western Siberia, and when applying the method of reservoir flooding, this fact should be taken into account and a more detailed approach should be taken to the study of capillary forces to prevent flooding of productive objects. Despite the good knowledge of the West Siberian megabasin, some fundamental issues of its structure and oil and gas potential remain debatable.The article proposes methods for improving oil recovery of the BS10 formation of the Ust-Balykskoye oil field based on the study of capillary pressures in productive reservoir formations, and provides recommendations for the placement of injection wells. The study of the capillary properties of reservoir rocks will significantly improve the efficiency of exploration and field operations in oil fields.

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Screening selection of enhanced oil recovery methods based on analytics of worldwide oilfield data with reference to offshore oil fields in Vietnam

Petrovietnam Journal ◽

10.47800/pvj.2021.06-01 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

pp. 4-17

Author(s):

Doan Huy Hien ◽

Hoang Long ◽

Pham Quy Ngoc

Keyword(s):

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil Field ◽

Oil Fields ◽

Screening Guidelines ◽

Reservoir Fluid ◽

Special Cases ◽

Key Factor ◽

Offshore Oil

Selecting a proper enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method for a prospective reservoir is a key factor for successful application of EOR techniques. Reservoir engineers usually refer to screening guidelines to identify potential EOR processes for a given reservoir. However, these guidelines are often too general. In this study, we develop an advanced EOR screening technique based on the statistical analyses with boxplot in combination with some initial deep learning analyses to select the most suitable EOR method for a given mature oil field. At first, a database and the screening guidelines were established by compiling the information of 1,098 EOR projects from various publications in different languages, including Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ) biannual EOR surveys, SPE publications, DOE reports, and Chinese publications, etc. Boxplots were used to detect the special cases for each reservoir/fluid property and to present the graphical screening results. A case study was used to demonstrate that with a simple input of reservoir/fluid information, the proposed procedure could effectively give recommendations for EOR method selection. With the inputs (reservoir and fluid properties) from Vietnam offshore oil fields, the EOR methods recommended by this study are mostly chemical, including polymer and surfactant injection.

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Induced Seismicity in the Delaware Basin, West Texas, is Caused by Hydraulic Fracturing and Wastewater Disposal

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America ◽

10.1785/0120200087 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 110 (5) ◽

pp. 2225-2241 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Alexandros Savvaidis ◽

Anthony Lomax ◽

Caroline Breton

Keyword(s):

Hydraulic Fracturing ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Daily Basis ◽

Fort Worth ◽

Wastewater Disposal ◽

Delaware Basin ◽

West Texas ◽

Oil And Gas Operations ◽

Epicentral Location ◽

Different Sources

ABSTRACT Most current seismicity in the southern U.S. midcontinent is related to oil and gas operations (O&G Ops). In Texas, although recorded earthquakes are of low-to-moderate magnitude, the rate of seismicity has been increasing since 2009. Because of the newly developed Texas Seismological Network, in most parts of Texas, recent seismicity is reported on a daily basis with a magnitude of completeness of ML 1.5. Also, funded research has allowed the collection of O&G Op information that can be associated with seismicity. Although in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, recent seismicity has been associated mostly with saltwater disposal (SWD), in the South Delaware Basin, West Texas, both hydraulic fracturing (HF) and SWD have been found to be causal factors. We have begun to establish an O&G Op database using four different sources—IHS, FracFocus, B3, and the Railroad Commission of Texas—with which we can associate recent seismicity to HF and SWD. Our approach is based on time and epicentral location of seismic events and time, location of HF, and SWD. Most seismicity occurs in areas of dense HF and SWD-well activity overlapping in time, making association of seismicity with a specific well type impossible. However, through examination of clustered seismicity in space and time, along with isolated clusters of spatiotemporal association between seismicity and O&G Ops, we are able to show that a causation between HF and seismicity may be favored over causation with SWD wells in areas of spatially isolated earthquake clusters (Toyah South, Reeves West, Jeff Davis Northeast, and Jeff Davis East). Causality between SWD and seismicity may be inferred for isolated cases in Reeves South and Grisham West.

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EOR Consideration in Marginal Field Operations

10.2118/207134-ms ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chukwunonso Uche ◽

Samuel Esieboma ◽

Jennifer Uche ◽

Ibrahim Bukar

Keyword(s):

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Heavy Oil ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Oil And Gas Industry ◽

Economic Effects ◽

Oil Field ◽

Recovery Method ◽

Recovery Technique ◽

Marginal Field

Abstract "Marginal field" was introduced to the oil and gas industry to identify those fields that have negative economic effects in its development. More specifically it is possible to define a marginal field as a field that is cost ineffective to develop with conventional oil and gas means of technology. Economic development of marginal fields in most cases requires the use of existing processes to minimize cost of finding evolving technologies in development of reserves. This paper generally evaluates the feasibility of using the enhanced oil recovery technique to improve reserves in a marginal field operating environment. A marginal heavy oil field in the offshore environment of the Niger Delta region which started production in 2011 is used as a case study to evaluate the feasibility of the use of enhanced oil recovery method to improve recovery. Due to poor mobility ratio in this heavy oil field and its associated big aquifer sizes, pockets of unrecovered oil have been left behind the water fronts and water cut has risen above 80% in most of the producing wells. Recent integrated field evaluation shows that the recovery factor is poor compared to the size of oil originally in place and this triggered the need to process subsurface assessments of developing such reserves that exist in any marginal field using enhanced oil recovery technique. This paper therefore goes through the fundamental scope of an enhanced oil recovery study process to determine the applicability of this technology in a marginal oil field.

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INVESTIGATION OF THERMAL PROPERTIES OF RESERVOIR ROCKS AT DIFFERENT SATURATION

10.31224/osf.io/qtahw ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sudad H Al-Obaidi ◽

Kamensky IP ◽

Smirnov VI

Keyword(s):

Thermal Properties ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Thermal Characteristics ◽

Gas Production ◽

Oil Field ◽

Oil And Gas Production ◽

Field Development ◽

Water Saturated ◽

And Control

Oil and gas production using formation thermal stimulation or treatment represents one of the main enhanced oil recovery methods. In this study the thermal properties of rocks and their relationship to the nature of rock saturation were investigated.The method, experimental setup, and results of studying the thermal characteristics of fine - and medium-grained highly porous sandstones at their different saturation are presented. The highest values of thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity and heat capacity correspond to water-saturated samples, smaller values correspond to oil-saturated ones and the lowest values corresponds to dry (extracted) samples. The obtained data can be used in the selection of the technology of thermal formation stimulation on the reservoir and control over the process of oil field development.

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