Abstract
Colombia is a country with important reserves of heavy oil, located mainly at the "llanos orientales" and at the "Magdalena Valley Medium" basin, the oilfields located in this basin, have been developed using cyclic steam stimulation, showing recovery factors close to 15%, indicating that a large quantity of oil has not been removed yet.
Due to the above reasons, it has been thought in the steam flooding as an alternative for the extraction of remaining oil, but the intercalated shale in the deposits in question, acting as thieves, heat affects the thermal efficiency of the process, why is not clear whether the steam flooding will be viable in the deposits of the Magdalena valley, specifically in the TECA field. Given the above, it is necessary to conduct a study to determine the effect of the intercalated shale on thermal efficiency. This study was carried out using numerical simulation and analytical models in the case of a numerical simulation model was compared with intercalations of shale and a homogeneous model, we conducted a further analysis of sensitivity to the rock and fluid properties, as well as operational parameters for the implementation of a steam flooding, including a scheme of selective injection.
Finally, we found that the thermal efficiency is greatly affected by the intercalated shale is decreasing by up to 30%, a value considerably higher than would seriously affect the technical and economic feasibility of the project but has been observed to implement a scheme of selective injection could increase the efficiency of the process, making this more feasible to perform.