Abstract—Superheated steam has some special properties, such as high temperature but low pressure, high quality (100%), higher latent heat and larger specific volume. In this article, numerical simulation technology was employed to analyze performance of cyclic superheated steam stimulation in thin heavy oil reservoirs with different net pay, such as 1-3 m, 3-5 m and 5-10 m. By contrasting of incremental oil production, saving volume of steam consumption, distribution features of reservoir temperature and oil saturation after injecting conventional wet steam, hot saturated steam and superheated steam, the technological advantages of cyclic superheated steam stimulation was analyzed to develop heavy oil reservoirs. The results showed that incremental oil ability of superheated steam was much higher than conventional wet steam and hot saturated steam, but the degree of incremental oil gradually became slower when superheated degree was over 20ºC. When the same volume of heavy oil was produced by the three kinds of steams, superheated steam could save steam consumption.

Index Terms—superheated steam; heavy oil reservoir; cyclic steam stimulation; EOR; numerical simulation

Cite: Zhanxi Pang and Chengxiang Qi, "The Role Analysis of Superheated Steam Injection to Improve Performance in Thin Heavy Oil Reservoir," Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 189-193, September 2014. doi: 10.12720/jiii.2.3.189-193