Improvement Strategy Heating and Drainage in Reservoir Complex Structure with High Faulted and Dipping in Area-9 D Field Heavy Oil Steamflood

D field is the world's most significant operational steam flood that is currently produced from 13 existing areas. Area-9 is the most structurally complex in the D field. The existence of many faults and reservoir dipping is the primary issue that creates a complex compartmentation in the reservoir with faulting orientation mostly NE-SW and dipping to the East direction. The complexity of structure in Area-9 impacted the connectivity problem of producers’ and injectors’, caused reservoir heating and drainage not optimum, and impacted a low current recovery factor (RF) of ~45% compared to other mature areas with RF of 80%. The previous strategy to improve drainage and production in Area-9 by performing chemical jobs in many immature wells could not have improved heating, drainage, and production more effectively. A new strategy implemented to improve drainage, heating, and production in Area-9 established using the Area-9 conceptual model aims to get a deeper understanding of injection and production performance that links to faulted reservoir and compartmentalization. The improvement jobs that were applied for the Area-9 conceptual model are reactivating some of the idle steam injector wells in both surface and subsurface facilities to improve the heating of immature wells and patterns, performing some stimulation steam cyclic injection in surrounding producer wells located at the down dip of the pattern to connect steam between producer to an injector that can improve heating and drainage of the reservoir, perform some of the chemical stimulation jobs for mature well to improve well and pattern drainage. Ensure the reservoir temperature is already hot (mature) to ensure the chemical material works appropriately. By performing a new strategy, using Area-9 conceptual model successfully proved to improve heating, drainage, and production and unlock significant remaining oil opportunities. Some achievements of implementing the new strategy are improving heating by 30 – 60 deg F/job, increasing oil production by 7-15 bopd/job, and improving declining production performance in 2021-2022 (+2%) compared to 2020 (-7%). This effort has become a lean sigma project with a total Actual Financial Benefit (AFB) of ~ $2.5 MM. The next plan for applying a new strategy to improve heating and drainage in Area 9 is to consistently execute proactive thermal stimulation jobs and reactivate some of the injector wells. Future develops pattern alignment in Area-9 by adding more producer, injector, and observation wells to be aligned to the Area-9 conceptual model.