Zhu 2016
Zhu 2016
Zhu 2016
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Abstract
MY01 is an offshore field located in Malaysia. Although souring mitigation by nitrate injection was
applied from the start of the seawater flood, hydrogen sulphide (H2S) has been detected in several
producers after injected seawater breakthrough. The objectives of this work are to understand the causes
of reservoir souring in MY01 and to provide key considerations for improving souring prediction in low
temperature reservoirs, as generalised from the learnings from this field.
Reservoir souring potential was assessed using a Joint Industrial Project (JIP) developed program
(SourSimRL). SourSimRL is a reservoir model post-processor which simulates the microbial generation,
scavenging, adsorption and transport processes of H2S in fields subjected to waterflood, based on fluid
dynamics, reservoir conditions and water chemistries as dictated by the reservoir model. The MY01
reservoir model was split into two parts: (i) a history matched model that allows calibration on reservoir
souring simulator input parameters; and (ii) a forecast model on which souring development is predicted.
Extensive sensitivity studies were conducted to define key factors promoting or inhibiting H2S production
to match the actual H2S levels seen in the producers. Furthermore, the application of microbiological
analysis to understand the reservoir souring behaviour, including screening of bacteria present using
DNA-based techniques is also discussed.
The simulations demonstrated that carbon is the souring limiting factor in MY01. To match the H2S
field data, other metabolisable carbon sources should be available in addition to the volatile fatty acids
(VFA’s) in the formation water. The souring development in such field could be driven by the mechanism
of the carbon supply. Therefore, it is critical to identify the type and quantify the level of dissolved organic
carbon, including oil-derived BTEX or microbial degradation products. Since MY01 reservoir conditions
are favourable for souring activities, microbial development is likely to take place both in the biofilm that
forms at the injector face as well as at flood fronts deeper into the reservoir.
Introduction
Reservoir souring is a phenomenon where hydrogen sulphide (H2S) is generated by Sulphate Reducing
Bacteria (SRB) and Archaea (SRA), collectively called Sulphate Reducing Prokaryotes (SRP). The
2 SPE-179787-MS
induced reservoir souring due to waterflooding can lead to H2S production in the oil, gas and water
streams which result in significant cost and HSE exposure, potentially requiring extensive materials
replacement and extended shutdowns. Focus has been given across the industry to understand the causes
and effective prevention of reservoir souring. Proper souring assessment is therefore deemed as an
essential input to field development plans that envision secondary or tertiary recovery processes. This
work presents a detailed field case evaluation of reservoir souring potential in the MY01 field, bringing
new insight into souring assessment for low temperature reservoirs with limited amounts of volatile fatty
acids (VFA’s).
MY01 is an offshore, shallow reservoir located in Malaysia. For pressure maintenance, seawater
flooding was implemented in field a few years ago. Prior to the waterflood operation, a preliminary
souring screening based on analogue field data concluded that reservoir souring (50-100 ppmv H2S in gas
at standard conditions (STP)) would be expected to occur when injecting seawater. The reservoir (e.g.
temperature, mineralogy) and fluid characteristics (e.g. water chemistries) were recognised to be favorable
to SRP activity which called for a proper souring mitigation strategy. In view of the effective mitigation
experience seen in Bonga (Kuijvenhoven, Bostock, et al. 2005) (Kuijvenhoven, Bostock, et al. 2006) and
other industry operations, nitrate injection was selected as the most suitable technique in this field and was
implemented from the start of the waterflood. At the start of the operation, nitrate injection has
encountered various challenges including low uptime and suboptimal dosage. After 1-2 years of water-
flooding, H2S has been detected in several producers. To understand the root causes of reservoir souring,
a souring re-assessment has been performed.
temperatures. In the literature (Sunde, et al. 1993), there are two different models to describe reservoir
souring in terms of H2S generation and migration:
● Biofilm: The H2S is being generated in the biofilm that forms at the injector face. All ingredients
as necessary for SRP growth are supplied with the injected seawater. The main drawback in this
concept is the poor availability of carbon, which is normally present in very low levels in the sea
water, assuming that no extra carbon source is added by achieving effective microbial control in
the surface injection facilities.
● Mixing zone: The H2S generation occurs at or close to the flood front, where sulphate is supplied
by the seawater and carbon nutrients are provided by the formation water. The limiting factor in
this concept is that either bacteria needs to follow the slowly moving flood front, or indigenous
microbes need to be activated and proliferate during the time that is required for the mixing zone
to move through the location to where they are situated. In addition, temperatures in mixing zones
rapidly approach reservoir temperature as the flood front progresses, which in case of high
reservoir temperatures (above 85°⬎C) is too high to sustain prolific microbial activity.
In reality, the combination of the two models is believed to be the most plausible scenario for souring
activities. The reservoir temperature and the fluid dynamics are the factors that decide which souring
model is more dominant during the waterflood operation.
Souring mitigation options
Without constraining the SRP activities, the H2S emergence in produced fluids can be limited by
indigeneous properties of the reservoir matrix. H2S can be scavenged by iron bearing minerals (e.g.
siderite) or captured in reservoir sinks such as aquifers, gas cap and unswept oil. However, these
properties are field specific and usually cannot be relied upon to effectively control the souring
development. For that, H2S production needs to be controlled at the source and the following options are
the most commonly applied:
● Biocide treatment: controls the SRP activity by effectively destroying the microbial cells.
Generally, biocide treatment is not considered effective for control of microbial reservoir souring,
but deemed essential for an effective surface control. Recently, however, continuous low-dosage
4 SPE-179787-MS
biociding has been getting more attention due to its potential microbial control ability across the
reservoir (Jones, et al. 2011).
● Sulphate Removal Unit (SRU): reduces the SRP activity by removing sulphate in the injection
water. SRU might offer the best H2S mitigation besides helping in sulphate scale prevention
(Alkindi, et al. 2007). However, it is very cost intensive and the mitigation effect is less
pronounced when sulfate is sufficiently present in the formation water.
● Nitrate injection: controls the SRP activity by stimulating the proliferation of Nitrate-Reducing
Bacteria (NRB), which outcompete the SRP by faster growth on the common carbon nutrient. This
biocompetition method has been applied across the industry and has shown effectiveness in
controlling reservoir souring (Kuijvenhoven, Bostock, et al. 2006) (Kuijvenhoven, Bostock, et al.
2005).
Furthermore, H2S scavengers (e.g. Triazine based chemicals) can be applied as a polishing step to
remove the (remaining) H2S from the produced fluids. In this case, reservoir is allowed to turn sour to a
certain extent where treatable amounts of H2S (e.g. ⬍50 kg/d) can be co-produced with the fluids. Higher
H2S mass flows can be scavenged, but this is not always economical.
Field description
Reservoir conditions
Field MY01 is an offshore, shallow reservoir containing light crude with low viscosity. Several reservoir
souring promoting properties are prevailing in the reservoir, characterised by:
●
Mild reservoir temperature (⬍55 °⬎C)
●
Moderate formation water salinity (1.5 wt.%)
●
Minimum H2S scavenging capacity (zero to trace content of siderite mineral)
Carbon source
Formation water has been sampled and analysed for MY01. The measured VFA levels are below the
detection limit (⬍5 mg/l) for all C1-C5 short chain fatty acids. Two other potential sources of carbon have
been considered but not quantified:
● Water dissolved BTEX
● Crude oil biodegradation (not expected in MY01)
Field development
To optimise oil production, seawater injection was implemented to provide additional pressure support.
High levels of H2S tolerance have been designed in the wells and surface facilities where the materials
are selected for sour service according to the NACE standard (MR0175). Material integrity wise, reservoir
souring is therefore less of a concern in MY01. However, for operational safety reasons, effective souring
mitigation is still required.
Despite implementing nitrate injection, an increasing H2S production trend has been detected for
several wells 1-2 years after the commencement of the waterflood. Initially, the H2S increase was thought
to be mainly caused by the interruptions in nitrate injection (low uptime) and suboptimal dosage due to
nitrate consumption in the pipeline. According to the literature, certain species of SRB showed ability to
utilise nitrate as an electron acceptor (Lopez-Cortes, et al. 2006). When nitrate injection was interrupted
in MY01, the already co-cultivated nitrate-utilising SRB might have switched over to sulphate as electron
acceptor, skipping the relatively long lag phase (metabolism activation) as required for the non-nitrate
consuming SRP. As a result, H2S might be rapidly generated during the nitrate downtime. However, the
continuous increase of H2S gas concentration was unexpected in MY01 as: (i) nitrate injection operation
has already been stabilised for a considerable time; and (ii) there is no evidence on the presence of
SPE-179787-MS 5
nitrate-reducing SRP in MY01. To have more insight into this souring development, a detailed souring
re-assessment has been conducted using novel modeling and analytical methods.
SourSimRL
The reservoir souring potential in MY01 was assessed using a Joint Industrial Project (JIP) developed
program named SourSimRL. This is a reservoir model post-processor simulating the microbial generation,
scavenging, adsorption and transport processes of H2S in fields subjected to waterflooding. Since the
reservoir souring development is strictly linked with the reservoir fluid dynamics, several types of data
required for proper SourSimRL modelling are:
● A (history matched) black-oil reservoir model containing outputs on reservoir dynamics
● Input parameters describing field specific conditions and water chemistries
● Model coefficients that describe the microbial behavior in the target field of study, both for SRP
and NRB (nitrate mitigation module add-on).
The reservoir model from field MY01 was split into two parts, consisting of a history matched (HM)
model that allows calibration on reservoir souring simulator input parameters, and a forecast (FC) model
on which souring development is predicted. Since a lot of SourSimRL input parameters are field specific
and difficult to obtain, the calibration on HM model is considered critical and has enabled the souring
model to be fine-tuned using the actual H2S field data.
HM model calibration
Extensive sensitivity studies were simulated in SourSimRL to determine key factors promoting or
inhibiting H2S production in this field. Since the reservoir temperature is suitable for microbial growth and
abundant sulfate is available as result of seawater injection, carbon seems to be the souring limiting factor
in MY01, assuming the other required growth nutrients (mainly phosphorus and nitrogen) can be
unlimitedly sourced from the reservoir mineralogy. To calibrate the souring model with the H2S field data,
simulations have been performed with or without the nitrate mitigation option. The results showed that:
● The measured level of VFA’s (⬍5 mg/l) in formation water alone could not explain the detected
H2S seen in the field, even assuming no souring mitigation was realised by nitrate injection.
● Alternative carbon sources should be available at the conditions prevailing in MY01 to match the
actual H2S levels seen in the producers, including
✓ ~5 mg/l BTEX (Toluene) in formation and injection water after partitioning from the oil phase
✓ Or 100 mg/l longer chain organic carbon/acids (C5⫹) in formation water
● Due to the low reservoir temperature, microbial activity can be sustained at a large area around the
flood front. Therefore, the mixing zone concept is expected to be the predominant souring model
in field MY01, where H2S is mainly generated following the flood front. In a heterogeneous field
such as MY01 where seawater breakthrough is rapid, early production of H2S is likely to occur,
which could explain the topside detection of H2S in MY01 within a year after the waterflood
start-up.
● Using the higher carbon levels, nitrate mitigation prediction module showed ~10% reduction in
total H2S production. The low mitigation efficiency might be due to the large disproportionality
between nitrate (few ppm or zero) and sulphate (thousands of ppm) further away from the injector.
In view of the uncertainties in nitrate efficiency in such reservoir conditions, no nitrate mitigation
sensitivities have been taken into the forecast modeling.
6 SPE-179787-MS
FC model prediction
Either carbon supply mechanism (or the combination of the two) could result in H2S production levels as
seen in the field. However, their implications for the future souring development are very different:
● BTEX partitioning
As seawater is injected in the proximity of oil-water contact in MY01, the BTEX partitioning
scenario might assume prolonged availability of carbon. As result of ‘continuous’ supply of carbon
via oil (as long as BTEX is not depleted in the oil) and sulphate via seawater, the H2S production
is expected to continuously increase, which is reflected in the increasing H2S concentrations
predicted for the producers (Figure 2A).
Figure 2—SourSimRL predicted unmitigated H2S profiles for field MY01 individual wells
A: assuming BTEX partitioning mechanism with ~5 mg/l toluene-carbon in the injected and the formation water after partitioning from
the oil phase.
B: assuming VFA-equivalent carbon supply with 100 mg/l carbon initially present in the formation water. All H2S results are normalised
to the maximum predicted H2S concentration in the associated gas.
in low precision. This conventional method is only included here for comparison with qPCR and
will be phased out in future microbial analyses.
● Pyrosequencing-454: allows identification of microorganisms by metagenomic sequencing and
database matching.
● ATP analysis: an enzymatic assay that enumerates active microbial cells through the detection of
the key energy-carrier molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). In combination with total micro-
bial enumeration methods like qPCR, this provides insights as to what percentage of the microbial
community present is actually active.
An overview of the microbial analysis is provided in Table 1.
Combined
Bacteria Total
count NRB SRP ATP Bacterial NRB SRP
Location (cells/ml)1 (cells/ml) (cells/ml) (pgATP/ml) count2 (cells/ml) (cells/ml)
1
Covers the counts on NRB, SRP, general heterothroph bacteria (GHB) and acid producing general heterothroph bacteria (APGHB).
2
Covers the counts on all types of bacteria.
as electron acceptor but do not utilise acetate, propionate or butyrate as electron donors, which
might explain their presence in the VFA lacking environment. It is unclear though which carbon
or electron donor was sourced for these bugs in MY01.
In addition to the producer wellhead and flow lines, samples have been taken from locations in the
export lines. Remarkably, high concentrations of acetate and proprionate have been measured up to 150
mg/l in the produced water, accompanied by elevated level of SRP cells (MPN test only). At the moment,
it is not fully understood where this VFA is coming from.
Novel assessment and mitigation considerations
Reservoir temperature vs. VFA
Following from the souring assessments performed in MY01 and the neighbouring fields, a clear trend has
been observed between the reservoir temperature and the level of short chain VFA in the formation water
(Figure 3). Apparently, high temperature reservoir is associated with a high content of VFA in the
formation water whereas (almost) no VFA is detected in the shallower, low temperature reservoirs (⬍60
°⬎C). Similar correlation has been found in waterflooded operations in other areas (e.g. Nigeria and North
Sea).
Figure 3—Observed trend between the reservoir temperature and the measured VFA level in the formation water
Eventhough abundant carbon is available in the hot reservoirs, souring is restricted as most of the
bioactivities are limited by the unfavorable temperature. When cold seawater is introduced in such fields,
H2S generation would be mainly expected around the injector where the conditions become suitable for
microbial growth. For the shallow reservoirs, the temperature is already favorable for microbial growth
but the ‘easy carbon’ VFA is often lacking in the formation water due to its microbial conversion by
in-situ microbes. Souring potential in these fields is strongly limited by the level of available carbon. For
an appropriate reservoir souring assessment in such fields, it is therefore essential: (i) to identify and
quantify alternative dissolved carbon sources (e.g. BTEX); and (ii) to determine the biodegradability of
these and the oil in the presence and absence of sulphate and/or nitrate.
Reservoir temperature vs. nitrate mitigation
Souring mitigation by nitrate injection is proven to be effective in various waterflood operations where the
reservoir temperatures are relatively high (e.g. ⬎70 °⬎C) (Kuijvenhoven, Bostock, et al. 2005) (Kui-
SPE-179787-MS 9
jvenhoven, Bostock, et al. 2006)1. In such reservoir conditions, SRP activities would mainly take place
around the injector wellbore where the SRP communities could be effectively targeted by the nitrate-
induced NRB populations. However, for low temperature reservoirs such as MY01, nitrate mitigation
efficiency might be debatable. Since the reservoir temperature is mild and carbon source (oil-derived
BTEX or microbial degradation products) could be available in the reservoir, H2S is likely to be generated
both around the injector and near the flood front (Figure 1). Due to the large disproportionality between
the injected nitrate and sulphate, nitrate concentration might be depleted at the flood fronts where sulphate
and carbon are still amply present. The required nitrate/carbon stoichiometry to prevent souring could no
longer be reached in these areas, hence allowing the proliferation of SRP.
Another possibility could be that the injected nitrate has enhanced reservoir souring under low
temperature condition by in-situ generation of the SRP-substrates. Consumable carbon might be unlocked
through NRB-mediated oil biodegradation which causes the SRP to thrive in the reservoir. Further
analyses are required to confirm this view.
To control the reservoir souring development in these low temperature fields, alternative souring
mitigation methods might be required. Potential novel solutions could be the co-injection of nitrate and
biocide or the perchlorate-based strategy (Liebensteiner, Tsesmetzis, et al. 2014) (Liebensteiner, Stams
and Lomans 2014). These measures are currently under investigation.
Conclusions
1. Reservoir souring modeling using SourSimRL helps to explain and predict souring development
for existing and new waterflood operations.
2. The level of VFA in formation water seems closely related to the temperature of the reservoir. A
low temperature reservoir (⬍60 °⬎C) is often associated with no or low VFA in the formation
water (such as in MY01). The souring potential in these fields is very dependent on the levels of
other metabolisable carbon sources. It is therefore critical to identify the type and quantify the level
of dissolved organic carbon, including oil-derived BTEX or microbial degradation products.
3. In low temperature reservoirs, souring development could be driven by the mechanism of the
carbon supply. Finite provision of carbon, e.g. via existing dissolved organic carbons in the
formation water, could result in peak shaped H2S production profile where the souring level
declines when nutrient, mostly carbon in this case, is depleting. Prolonged carbon supply, e.g. via
BTEX partitioned from the oil into both the injected and formation water, could result in
significantly higher and prolonged severities in reservoir souring after the passing of injection
water front.
4. While souring mitigation by nitrate injection shows high efficiency in the high temperature
reservoirs, its effect in the low temperature fields is still debatable. The low SRP numbers in the
produced water samples might reflect the baseline indigenous SRP community, but could also
indicate that the SRP activities were not sufficiently suppressed in reservoir MY01. This might be
specific to the low temperature reservoirs, where nitrate is rapidly depleted at the flood front while
(i) sulphate, carbon are still sufficiently available and (ii) reservoir temperature is suitable for
microbial growth.
5. In these low temperature fields, there might be a possibility that nitrate injection actually causes
a release of SRP-substrates through nitrate-mediated oil biodegradation. Further research might be
considered to confirm this theory.
1
Note that the reservoir temperature of Bonga in the paper needs to be corrected to 77°C
10 SPE-179787-MS
Way forward
1. For low temperature field such as MY01, alternative souring mitigation is required, including the
co-injection of nitrate and biocide or perchlorate-based strategy. This could call for a new industry
consensus of how to combact reservoir souring at the low temperature conditions.
2. Novel microbial analyses are useful tools to support the understanding and the prediction of the
reservoir souring development. The application of these analyses could be included as a common
procedure in the full field souring assessment.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Jamal Mohamed B M Ibrahim, M Razib Raub, M Faizal Sedaralit
(Technical Global Division, PETRONAS) and Pauziyah A Hamid (PETRONAS Research Sdn Bhd) for
permission to publish this paper. Our appreciations also extend to the SourSimRL software developers
from ESSS and OilPlus for their support during the reservoir souring simulation work. Last, but not least,
we also would like to acknowledge Intertek for performing all the abovementioned microbial analyses.
Nomenclature
BTEX : Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, Xylene
GHB : General heterotroph bacteria
JIP : Joint Industrial Project
MPN : Most probable number
NRB : Nitrate reducing bacteria
qPCR : Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction
SRA : Sulphate Reducing Archaea
SRB : Sulphate reducing bacteria
SRP : Sulphate Reducing Prokaryotes
VFA : Volatile fatty acids
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