Reservoir Oil Fingerprinting,
a tool for...
Reservoir continuity studies
In-fill drilling site evaluation
Evaluation of well plumbing problems
Evaluation of oil mixing
Production allocation
The Reservoir Oil Fingerprinting (ROF) WorkStation is used to chemically characterize or fingerprint oil samples in order to evaluate reservoir continuity or well plumbing problems. When combined with geological and engineering data, the ROF technique can be used to determine reservoir compartmentalization and connectivity across a field from oil samples from different horizons and various wells. For example, is horizon "A" in communication across the fault? is horizon "B" connected between wells #2 and #3? This assists in understanding field structure and in-fill drilling locations. Also, well plumbing problems can also be evaluated from analysis of oil samples. These may include leak evaluation from defective packers, tubing or casing. In addition mixing of oils in tubing strings and extent of commingling can be assessed.
The ROF technique is quite simple and effective. Oil samples are analyzed by gas chromatography which separates various compounds from the oil matrix. This separation and detection results in a "fingerprint" of the oil which can alternatively be viewed as a histogram of the relative amounts of the various compounds. By selecting various peak ratios of minor components in the oil which are most indicative of the range of differences in a group of oils, the oils may be found to be qualitatively different suggesting no communication or similar suggesting connectivity. Comparison of oils is often presented graphically as a star diagram or alternatively as a line plot. This graphical comparison of oils can also be supplemented by a detailed statistical analysis such as a cluster analysis of the various peak ratios by oil.
Peak ratios are selected based on minor compositional differences in oils.
These peak ratios can be plotted on a star or radar plot to illustrate these differences.
The Reservoir Oil Fingerprinting WorkStation is a complete system for automatically acquiring and processing crude oil fingerprints. Column performance and retention time reproducibility are critical in this process and the new HP 6890 gas chromatograph with flow programming help insure more reproducible and consistent results
The ROF WorkStation consists of the following:
Copyright © 1997-2000 Humble Instruments &
Services, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Revised: