Alick Cheng

Prevention of Refinery Tower Plugging by Residual Oil Gellant Chemicals in Crude-Pilot Plant Evaluation of Alternative Oil Gellants

Earlier work by the authors (1) described refinery plugging caused by volatile phosphorus components originating from phosphate ester oil gellants. Also documented were two successful field trials of new phosphonate ester oil gellants which were shown to address this problem. In a later work (2) the authors presented the results of additional field testing of phosphonate ester gellants directed at the optimization of cost and performance. In addition to the phosphonate ester systems previously tested, new modified phosphate ester systems will also become commercial. These modified phosphate esters also reduce volatile phosphorus according to ASTM D-86 distillation testing. However, several questions required further investigation. One of these is the comparative ability of phosphonate and modified phosphate esters to control volatile phosphorus and tower fouling at higher temperatures in the presence of steam. Distillations used to evaluate volatile phosphorus to date have had a 250°C endpoint and did not include water. Another continuing area of concern has been organic halide formation under distillation tower conditions. Although no organic halides were detected in either of the two initial field trials reported earlier (1) , further testing under more realistic conditions was required. To address these questions in the most meaningful way possible, full-scale pilot plant testing was conducted over several days with flowback captured after actual fracturing treatments. Fouling of a tray inserted in the pilot plant distillation tower was measured as well as fouling of the packing material. In addition, any changes in operating parameters such as rate, temperature or pressure over the time of each test were noted, as these could also be indicative of fouling. This paper presents the conclusions of this testing and should serve as a guide to the selection of oil gellant systems for the reduction of refinery tower and heat exchanger fouling.

Field study of ricinus viking formation

this field study was based on 50 fracturing jobs at 42 wells that H from the viking formation in the Ricmis area Four different fluid systems are four on the skin factor effective fracture half-kength percentage of sceenout jobs and productive ture treatment showed the best result on the effective fracture half-lengh and productive and proved to be thef best option a high percentage of fracture jobs having screned out 85% of unsuccessful jobs treating the formation at a pressure lower sible way to avoid screening our a field case was used to investigate this posibility with thfef application of a fracture am modol but it was not posible to punping at a rate low enough to prevent opening the natured fractures. Since july 17. 2002. the punping care and achieved a 100% success rate. This proved that punping at a high rate is the only option so far to combat PDL and place the proppant successfully.Economic value to the customer (EVC) analysis shows

System and method for fracturing a subterranean well formation for improving hydrocarbon production

460,000 in savings on ten gelled CO oil high rate fracture jobs for Petre-Canada Oil and Gas LTD.