Pressure-Up Blowdown Combustion: A Channeled Reservoir Recovery Process

Abstract

Summary The cyclic pressure-up blowdown combustion process was developed as a follow-up to cyclic steam stimulations that used fracturing to create injectivity. The process was designed to exploit a reservoir that had a high contrast between the mobility of the heated channels, left as a remnant of the cyclic steam operations, and the adjacent cold reservoir. The combined process of cyclic steam followed by combustion has the potential to achieve a recovery factor of about 30%.