Description
ABSTRACT
With the upward surge in global demand for energy, unconventional energy resources are being considered as options to quell the growing energy demand. These unconventional energy resources like oil sand, shale oil, shale gas, tight gas, are fast becoming alternatives to complement the conventional energy resources. Tar sand exploitation is being commercialized globally. With success stories from Canada, Venezuela and U.S.A., other countries tend to follow. Nigerian tar sands, which is similar to Canada’s tar sand in terms of chemical composition, water wet nature, etc., has some characteristics which will yield enormous economic benefit when exploited. The possibility of producing heavy oil from the Nigerian tar sand deposits by steam stimulation was evaluated in this paper with respect to the technology (Cyclic Steam Stimulation), environmental impact and the economic analysis, with Canada’s success stories used as reference point. The result of the study showed that heavy oil could be produced with steam stimulation process with little impact on the environment and with huge economic potentials.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
APPROVAL PAGE
DEDICATION
ACKNOWELDGEMENT
ABSTRACT
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
- PROBLEM STATEMENT
- AIM OF THE PROJECT
- OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
- LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
- PROJECT ORGANISATION
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
- REVIEW OF STUDY
- REVIEW OF DIFFERENT IMPROVED OIL RECOVERY METHODS
- OVERVIEW OF TAR SANDS
- PROPERTIES OF NIGERIAN TAR SAND
- TECHNOLOGY IN TAR SAND EXPLOITATION AND PRODUCTION
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 METHODOLOGY
- CYCLIC STEAM STIMULATION PROCESS
- PRODUCTION OPERATIONS AND CONTROL
- PERFORMANCE AND CHALLENGES
- LIMITATIONS
- ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION
- ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF TAR SAND
CHAPTER FOUR
- ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF TAR SAND
- ECONOMIC DRIVERS FOR TAR SANDS EXPLOITATION
- TAR SANDS SUPPLY COSTS
- ECONOMIC IMPACT AND SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
- THE NIGERIAN TAR SAND PROSPECT
- TAR SAND MARKET PROSPECT AND APPLICATION IN NIGERIA
- TAR SAND PROJECT POSSIBILITIES IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER FIVE
- CONCLUSION
- REFERENCES
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The global demand for energy in rapidly increasing and conventional oil reserves will not be able to meet up the increasing energy demand. The need to exploit unconventional resources is being considered globally. Some of the unconventional resources include tar sand, shale oil, shale gas and tight gas. These resources (with tar sand inclusive) are termed unconventional because they cannot be exploited with the available technologies used in exploiting the “conventional crude oil and gas”. Again, exploitation of these resources is quite expensive (Le Thiez, P.A. 2008).
Tar sands are sedimentary rocks (consolidated or unconsolidated) that contains bitumen (solid or semisolid hydrocarbons) or other heavy petroleum that, in natural state, cannot be recovered by conventional petroleum recovery methods. Technically, tar sand is not a combination of tar and sand as the name implies, since tar is a viscous liquid; black in colour with adhesive properties, obtained by the destructive distillation of coal, wood, shale, etc., and such an origin for tar in tar sands are rarely implied. On the other hand, “bitumen” is the name given to viscous liquids or solid materials black or dark brown in colour having adhesive properties, consisting essentially of hydrocarbons derived from petroleum or occurring in natural asphalt and soluble in carbon disulphide. Bitumen is found mixed with other component such as clay, water, etc., in sand known as “tar sand” by name, which is a misnomer or an inappropriate term and should rightly have been called “bitumen sand” since it is bitumen and not tar from destructive distillation of coal that is intermingled with the sand deposits. Bitumen is simply the name of the oil found in tar sands and until recently, Alberta’s bitumen deposits were known as tar sand but are now called “oil sands”. (da Silva, 2008) Tar sands is not only made up of bitumen but also consist of feldspar, Mica clay minerals in minor amount and quartz as the dominant mineral constituting over 90% of the entire assemblage of mineral grains. Tar sands are water wet by nature. In Nigerian, the tar sand belts fall within the Eastern Dahomey basin which is a coastal sedimentary basin filled with over 2500 metres of cretaceous and younger sediments unconformity overlying the block faulted basement complex rocks. The basin sedimentary fill was subdivided into three intervals by Durham Pickect namely (de Souza,2005):
- Sand and sandstone at the
- Alternating sand and
- Upper shales which correspond to the three formations of Ise, Afowo and Ararom respectively.
The grain size of the tar bearing sands vary from fine to coarse grained. The quartz sand forms a bulk of the material with either the bitumen i.e. Oil wet (as in the case of some US deposits – Utah), or water wet (as for the Athabasca in Canada and Okitipupa in Ondo State of Nigeria), forming the continuous phase, generally depending on the grade of the oil sand (Le Thiez, P.A, 2008).
The microscopic examination of the Athabasca tar sand shows that the thin film of water is about 10mm thick. The similarity of the grain/water relationship of both the Nigerian and Canadian tar sand makes it characteristically easy to derive comparative studies on processing Nigerian tar sand from the Canadian experience. Although, the Nigerian tar sand has been discovered since the dawn of the past 2 decades, they have largely remained unexploited due to the availability of the conventional oil in the neighbouring oil rich Niger Delta of the country. According to (Lino, U.R.A 2005) the lithology, hydrocarbon contents area and spatial distribution of the bituminous sands have been well documented. (Lino, U.R.A 2005) recommended that bitumen be exploited by open cast mining in areas where the bituminous sands outcrop or where they are overlain by less than 50 – 75 metres of over burden while heavy oil be exploited by the use of in-situ techniques in all areas south of the tar sand mine zone, especially where the over burden thickness is in excess of 100 meters.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Transported bitumen also contains impurities like sand and other waste which need to be removed at great cost. The problems of impurities in the bitumen and the operational problems from the mentioned methods can be decreased by using Cyclic Steam Stimulation.
1.3 AIM OF THE STUDY
The work presented by this paper is aimed primarily at giving the technical, environmental and economic evaluations (benefits and implications) of exploiting Nigerian Tar sand using Cyclic Steam Stimulation.
1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
At the end of this study, students involved shall be able to fully discuss the following:
- Evaluation of the Cyclic Steam Stimulation applied in tar sand
- Environmental impact evaluation of the
- Economic evaluation of tar sand
- Tar sand market and prospect in
1.5 LIMITATION OF THE PROJECT
This study is therefore limited to the following:
- Evaluation of the Cyclic Steam Stimulation process applied in tar sand
1.6 PROJECT ORGANISATION
The various stages involved in the development of this project have been properly put into five chapters to enhance comprehensive and concise reading. In this project thesis, the project is organized sequentially as follows:
Chapter one of this work is on the introduction to this study. Chapter two is on literature review of the study. In this chapter, all the literature pertaining to this work was reviewed.
Chapter three is on design methodology. In this chapter all the method used in this work were discussed.
Chapter four is on testing analysis. All testing that result accurate functionality was analyzed.
Chapter five is on conclusion, recommendation and references.
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