The paper presents the status of commercial in situ combustion (ISC) projects worldwide. It gives the essential information on two projects in India, one project in Romania and one project in USA.
The commercial ISC project at Suplacu de Barcau, Romania is the largest project of this kind, and it has been in operation for 34 years as a dry ISC process. Balol and Santhal projects in India have been in operation for more than 7 years, and have been applied in a wet mode. Currently, these three projects produce more than 500 m3/day (3450 bbl/day) from each project, while all three combined produce approx. 2,300 m3/day (15,860 bbl/day). Additionally, the project operated by Bayou State Oil Corp. (BSOC) in Bellevue, Louisiana, USA produces 51 m3/day (320 bbl/day). The amount of oil of 2,350 m3/day (approx. 15,000 bbl/day) seems to represent the total amount of heavy oil produced by ISC today.
The first three projects are operated using a peripheral line drive starting from the uppermost part of the reservoir and going downdip. While Suplacu de Barcau project occurs in a typical solution gas drive, shallow heavy oil reservoir, the Balol and Santhal projects are applied successfully in deeper reservoirs, having strong lateral water drive.
The BSOC Bellevue ISC project has been in operation for more than 34 years, it is a dry ISC process, and it has been conducted in patterns. Currently, it has 15 air injectors and 90 production wells.
The number of active ISC commercial projects has declined steadily from 15 in 1994 to 4 in 2004. However, in this period, sustained efforts have been made to develop new ISC methods to allow more control and easier operation of the process. These efforts led to the development of the new processes applied as short-distance ISC processes using horizontal producers, most of them being gravity stable. The most important ones are Toe-To-Heel Air Injection (THAI), Top down ISC and Basal ISC. Description and key information on these processes are given, along with their main merits and limitations. Status of development of these new processes are discussed; the essential elements related to their field piloting is provided.
Patented in 1920 in USA, the first very short term field pilot (actually the first ignition operation) took place in the former Soviet Union in 1933–1934, while the true testing of an in-situ combustion (ISC) process occurred in USA in 1950–1951. Since 1950 more than 162 ISC field pilot projects have been in operation. The process has been extensively studied both in laboratory and in field pilots. In the 1970–80 there was a maximum of 19 commercial ISC projects. However, this number decreased steadily to 4 active commercial processes, at this time. Worldwide, the general acceptance of the process is still debated, sometimes.
In 1994, fourteen out of 19 ISC projects were active1.