LAUSR

Venezuela’s largest heavy-oil deposits are found primarily in the Faja del Orinoco Belt. These deposits exhibit a low production rate under the cold flow method. The objective of this study is to model the impact of steam injection on the fluid dynamics, geomechanics, and seismic attributes for the Faja del Orinoco steam-assisted gravity drainage pilot project. In order to make core testing more representative under this operation conditions, a new heating system was developed to execute triaxial tests with heavy oil samples under elevated temperature and the results were used as input in a new thermo-poro-elastic–plastic coupled fluid flow and geomechanics simulator. Our simulation show that, after 8 years of steam injection, the temperature increased, reaching 280 °C around the injection well. In addition, oil saturation decreased from 0.803 to 0.13, pore pressures dropped to approximately 8.68 MPa, and the volumetric strain changes reached 0.00078 close to injector well. The results also indicated that the effects of compressibility on cumulate oil production with thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling reached 35% more than without coupling in 8 years of steam stimulation. The cumulative steam-oil rate was approximately 2.70 for 100 tons of steam per day, with 0.203 × 106 m3 (1.28 mmstb) cumulative oil volume and 0.548 × 106 m3.