Petroleum and Geothermal industries are embracing the present boom in production of crude oil and power generation. At the same time, longevity or sustainability of this boom is worried about. In petroleum industry, a lot of oil and gas wells have been or will be abandoned. There have been few ideas and methodologies regarding how to utilize the abundant resource left in the oil and gas reservoirs. In this study, we pointed out that these oil and gas reservoirs might be transferred into exceptional enhanced geothermal reservoirs with very high temperatures by oxidizing the residual oil with the injected air. A concept to generate power from these exceptional enhanced geothermal reservoirs by using geothermal power generation technology was proposed. Using Du84 reservoir (heavy oil) in Shuguang oil field, and Ren9 reservoir (light oil) in Renqiu oil field, both from PetroChina as examples, we estimated the possible energy and the income that might be generated from such exceptional enhanced geothermal systems. We speculated that both the oil and geothermal industries will boom much longer based on this study.

Keywords:
Upstream Oil & Gas, geothermal reservoir, deposition, shuguang oil field, exceptional enhanced geothermal system, standard coal, heavy oil, power generation technology, enhanced recovery, oxidation
Subjects:
Reservoir Characterization, Improved and Enhanced Recovery, Non-Traditional Resources, Exploration, development, structural geology, Thermal methods, Geothermal resources
Copyright 2008, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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