Abstract:

This presentation shows that residual oil saturation in hot water flooding is decreased as temperature increases; switching from hot water to steam injection indicates a substantial change in the residual saturation; Corey-based relative permeability curves matching shows that the relative permeability curvature as well as the end-points can change significantly with operating conditions; it was noticed that the history matches obtained with Corey exponent-based relative permeability curves did not match the final recovery values very well;  there may be two distinct modes of oil drainage:
(1) normal immiscible displacement that reaches the end-point saturations of the Corey type relative permeability curves fairly quickly;
(2) very slow rate drainage of oil appears to con5nue beyond that. This is consistent with reports of very low oil satura5ons found in drained steam chambers of SAGD field operations.