Publications

As the largest field in Southeast Asia, Minas represents a significant target for tertiary oil recovery processes. Following completion of the combined peripheral and pattern waterfloods, the Minas field will have 4.4 billion barrels of oil remaining. P.T. Caltex Pacific Indonesia (CPI), Pertamina, Texaco, and Chevron created a joint, multidisciplinary team to evaluate two high potential tertiary oil recovery methods for the Minas field. This paper describes the key technologies and processes used by the team to evaluate steamflood and lignin surfactant tertiary recovery methods for Minas.The project team developed a systematic evaluation process consisting of selecting the best portions of the field, building detailed geologic models, and forecasting production from detailed numerical simulation models. The evaluation process addressed the unique conditions of temperature, depth, and terrain which exist in the Minas field. A comprehensive geologic characterization of the productive Sihapas Formation sands included depositional facies mapping, stratigraphic framework, and 3-D seismic interpretation. Geologic data and 3-D seismic were input into a geostatistics model to build multiple geologic models to cover the geologic variability of the study area. Extensive laboratory and field measurements were obtained using updated techniques to capture rockl fluid and other physical measurements required for, the flow simulators. A base case geologic model was selected for each tertiary recovery method based upon flow simulation results. Variable sensitivity studies were performed and the recovery processes were optimized using the base case models. These studies indicated that both steamflooding and lignin surfactant flooding recovered substantial amounts of incremental oil in the Minas field. Tertiary oil recovery for the Minas field looks encouraging.The subject study demonstrated how CPI, Perl,amina and its two stakeholder companies, Texaco and Chevron, came together to collectively use each other's strengths to thoroughly evaluate two technically difficult recovery processes.