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Prediction of Heavy Oil Viscosities with a Simple Correlation Approach
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Heavy-oil development is becoming increasingly important because of the continuous decline in conventional-oil production. For
heavy-oil reservoirs, the oil viscosity usually varies dramatically
during production processes such as in thermal processes. When
producing heavy oil, the high viscosity is a major impediment to
recovery. Oil viscosity is often correlated directly to the reserves
estimate in heavy-oil formations and can determine the success
or failure of a given enhanced-oil-recovery scheme. As a result,
viscosity is an important parameter for performing numerical
simulation and determining the economics of a project.
In this work, a simple-to-use correlation has been developed to
correlate the viscosity of heavy oil to temperature and to a simple
correlating parameter that can be used for heavy-oil characterization. The reported results are the product of the analysis of heavyoil data collected from the open literature for various heavy-oil
fields around the world. The tool developed in this study can be
of immense practical value for petroleum engineers, providing a
method for quick assessment of the viscosity of heavy oils. In particular, petroleum and production engineers would find the proposed correlation to be user-friendly, with transparent calculations
involving no complex expressions.
The new proposed correlation shows consistently accurate
results. This consistency could not be matched by any of the widely
accepted existing correlations within the investigated range. For all
conditions, the new correlation provided better results than existing
correlations in the literature. -
- Date created
- 2015-01-01
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Type of Item
- Article (Published)