Research Information System
EUROCK 2021 Conference on Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering from Theory to Practice, Turin, Virtual, Italy, 20 - 25 September 2021, vol.833
© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.One of the plans for the production of Turkey's largest oil reserve, Bati Raman (1.85 billion barrels), is to use Mining-Assisted Heavy Oil Production (MAHOP). In this method, twin declines are excavated from the surface to the reservoir and a series of excavations (galleries) continue along the bottom of the reservoir. Fan-shaped steam injection and production holes are drilled in the reservoir from the crown of the galleries to use conventional Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). The Bati Raman reservoir is situated at an average depth of 1450 m, producing 12° API heavy oil from a 60m thick calcareous reservoir rock. This research aims to numerically investigate the stability of excavations together with the initiation, formation and propagation of fracture networks between the fan-shaped boreholes and around typical twin excavations using FLAC3D. It is shown that the stability of twin excavations and pillars between them can be guaranteed with suitable support types. In addition, this innovative approach in heavy oil production in hard rock media successfully showed that the fracture networks created by MAHOP could be used effectively for oil recovery of reservoir rocks using SAGD.