energy

Santos Basin is one of the most promising basins of Brazil, recently it was discovered light crude oil of 30º API (American Petroleum Institute), this reservoir of high productivity is located below a salt layer of two thousand meters of thickness. Salt also known as an evaporite rock is found in many hydrocarbon basins around the world. Evaporites are sediments formed initially from minerals dissolved in water, the most common are: halite, gypsum, and anhydrite. These minerals are found in areas that passed by a geological time of high evaporation or precipitation.

For the past few decades, with depletion of hydrocarbons in more readily accessible regions, petroleum operators have shown increasing interests in exploring onshore oil and gas reserves in Arctic areas, which are typically overlain by substantial permafrost layers on the order of 150 to 500 m thick. A key challenge to the completion of these wells is how to manage the impact of thaw subsidence of permafrost layers throughout expected well life.

Thermal technologies are widely used for the heavy oil recovery. The thermal processes usually consist of some variation of Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), steam flood or Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). These thermal recovery applications have experienced numerous well casing failures around the world, often resulting in loss of wellbore integrity, lost production and added costs.