Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Geoenergy Science and Engineering, cilt.235, 2024 (SCI-Expanded)
Conventional oil production methods and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques have been employed in heavy oil reservoirs for decades. Despite advancements in EOR, challenges persist due to specific reservoir characteristics, especially in regions heavily reliant on fossil fuels like Turkey, where the Bati Raman Oil Field faced the challenges, boasting an impressive 1.85 billion barrels of initial oil in place. Situated at an average depth of 1450 m, it produces 12° API heavy oil from a 60-m-thick calcareous reservoir rock. Despite attempts with EOR techniques like water flooding, steam flooding, and CO2 injection, the oil recovery has been limited to 9%. To overcome this challenge, the proposed Mining-Assisted Heavy oil Production (MAHOP) involves excavating multiple shafts and declines from the surface to create galleries at the bottom of the reservoir. Through fan-shaped steam injection and production boreholes, an oil production similar to conventional Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is planned. This research focuses on the detailed design of the underground mine, ventilation, and cooling network design for the economic analysis of the MAHOP for the Bati Raman field. The projected production rate of 250K barrels of oil per day yields promising financial indicators, with a Net Present Value (NPV) of 6.5 billion dollars and an IRR of 23%. Operating costs are estimated at 32.32 dollars per barrel of oil, and the initial capital investment is expected to be 5.36 billion dollars, with a base case oil price assumption of 70 dollars per barrel. Sensitivity analysis reveals the project's vulnerability to fluctuations in oil prices. Break-even analysis showed that the project's profitability is significantly compromised when the oil price falls below $50 per barrel. Furthermore, the project incurs losses when the oil price drops below $41.8 per barrel. While this study investigates the feasibility and the applicability of the proposed MAHOP oil production method in the Bati Raman reservoir scale, it not only provides guidance for the implementation of EOR techniques in deep underground reservoirs in terms of the mine design and cost estimations but also provides insights on parameters like oil price and recovery.