Mission Oil & Gas Activities

We help oil companies

Maximize oil recovery
Minimize cost and risk
Produce environmentally friendly

Our foundation
Advanced biotechnology and chemistry
Scientific principles - applied focus

Cooperation forms
Commercial services (lab & consultancy)
Training courses
Contract R&D
Public R&D projects
Overview Oil & Gas Activities

Around 50 employees working with oil & gas

Operations support team
Offshore field staff
R&D scientists and engineers

Facilities
Extensive analysis labs, state-of-the-art equipment
Dedicated oil field laboratory
Large-scale coating production facility

Activities and partners

Servicing operations in DK, Norway, UK & Germany
R&D partners world wide: Maersk Oil, Dong Energy,
Saudi Aramco, Wintershall, Total, Conoco Philips,
Hess, Statoil
DTI Enhanced Oil Recovery

Allan Poulsen, PhD Troels Nielsen, M.Sc. Chem. Eng. Jacob Cramer, PhD
Center Director Tracer specialist Tracer specialist

Henrik Fchtbauer, PhD Steffen Bhring, PhD Niels Voigt, PhD Manja Behrens, PhD Anders Tuxen, PhD
Coreflood specialist Tracer specialist R&D specialist Tracer specialist R&D specialist
The Tracer Team

Danish Technological institute

Accredited laboratories
Capacity for thousands of tracer samples per year (Gas, Oil and Water)
Vast experience with R&D, consultancy and analyses for the oil industry
Highly qualified staff within many different scientific and engineering
disciplines
Staff with relevant offshore training and experience.

HC Reservoir Engineering
20 years experience with tracer operations
Track record of numerous tracer studies (Design, Planning,
implememtation and analysis)
Has succesfully performed many different types of tracer studies
(Interwell, Single well, Matrix and Near Wellbore)
Extensive experience with integration of tracer data in Eclipse, Stars,
Imex reservoir models
Experience

Clients: Saudi Aramco, BP, Statoil, HESS, Maersk Oil,

ConocoPhillips, DONG, Wintershall, Total, Clariant.

Experience in Columbia:
The Caracara licence; Interwell tracing, first successful SWTT
Cusiana, Cupiagua and all associated smaller fields; First use of
gas tracers with capillary absorption tubes for sampling

Good working relationship with the Ecopetrol EOR group; Jos-

Francisco Zapata-Arango and Alexander Castro Chacon
Interwell Tracer

Studying interwell communication

High flow connections between
injector and producer well
Timespan of hours to few days
Complementary to interference
tests and PLT
Interwell Tracer

Deuterium is a natural isotope of hydrogen (156 ppm) O D

It behaves like water D
Non-toxic
Easy to get discharge permit from EPA
Fast equilibrium with water to form HDO:
D2O + H2O 2 HDO

Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy:

Measures Deuterium (0.3 precision ~ 26 ppb detection limit)
SPE 154878-MS
Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy

Easy field application

Detection limit in ppb range
Used for HDO detection

Figures from Picarro.com

Interwell Tracer

Data sets based on previous work

One tracer injection and multiple producers

No fracture Single fracture

Area under the curve gives
a 19 % recirculation rate

Response time of 103 to 113 minutes

Interwell tracer test with multiple wells

For mapping of the overall flow in the

reservoir
Inert chemical tracers are injected in
several wells. The relevant production
wells are sampled every week/month
for a period of months/years

Onshore sample analysis

50ppt detection limit

Near wellbore tracer test
Near wellbore
Coring-fluid invasion
How far does the drill mud penetrate the formation
Perforation flow measurement
Tracers are squeezed into the reservoir (mixed into perforation fluid).
By sampling from the well during production the active perforations can
be identified
Fracture flow measurement
Tracers are squeezed into the fracture during fracturing (one tracer pr
fracture).
Invasion percentages
When the well is produced, the active fractures can be identified
70

60
Degree of invasion (%)

50

40

30

20

10

0
8350 8400 8450 8500 8550 8600
Coring depth (ft)

Coring 1 Coring 3 Coring 4 Coring 5

Single well chemical tracer test

Measurement of residual oil saturation near the well

A reactive tracer is injected, shut-in and then back produced. Based
on elution profile both reactant and product, the amount of
remaining oil may be estimated.
Well suited for evaluation or EOR initiatives (measurement on same
well before and after EOR operation

Figures by Anders Tuxen, DTI. Adapted from Single-Well Chemical Tracer Test
Handbook, H. A. Deans and C. Carlisle.
Thermal Tracer

A thermal pill is pumped into a distributed temperature sensing

(DTS) well
DTS can be introduced by well tractor or be a part of the well
completion
The thermal tracer signal will tell you where and how much
injection water is leaving the well
An outline of a tracer study

Design
What, where and how much should be injected
Where and how often should we sample/meassure

Chemicals, permissions and injection equipment

Procure chemicals (tracers)
Get permission to use the tracers
Apply correct equipment to inject and sample
Identify injection and sampling points in the field

Injection of tracer
An outline of a tracer study

Sampling / Measurements
Installation and operation of any at site measurement equipment
Training of local personnel in correct sampling
Logistics of sample containers (both empty and full)

Chemical analysis
DTI chemical laboratory

Reporting
Data analysis
Discussion with relevant people (reservoir engineers, operational staff,
drilling engineers )
Integration with reservoir model
Reservoir modelling at DTI

Water flooding optimization

Injection/production rate optimization
Estimation of sweep efficiency

Evaluation of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)

Water/gas injection
Water/polymer or water surfactant

Chemical Tracer injection

Simulation of tracer injection
Simulation of reservoir flow patterns

Geochemical properties
Effect of solute injection
Which models can be used?

ECLIPSE
model

Simulation Results
Reservoir
simulation

Synthetic
model
 Simulation of tracer injection

Initial reservoir Tracer field Simulation of

model operation tracer recovery

Update reservoir model

Thank you

Troels Bach Nielsen, Consultant, M.Sc. Chem. Eng. trbn@dti.dk

Jacob Lind Cramer, Consultant, PhD, jrc@dti.dk