School of Earth and Environment
Untitled Document

Carlos Granados-Hernandez

Postgraduate Student

Telephone number: +44(0) 113 34 33647
Email address: eejcgh@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 8.154

Biography

Project details

Project Title: Reservoir Formation Damage Assessment in the Chicontepec siliciclastic oil-bearing reservoirs, Mexico

Supervisors: Professor Quentin Fisher and Dr Carlos Grattoni

Funding: PEMEX EXPLORACION Y PRODUCCION/CONACyT-SENER-HIDROCARBUROS

Start date: May 2011

Project Outline

The Chicontepec basin contains about the 40% Mexico's reserves and is today the most important petroleum project of the country. Since 2007, PEMEX Management started the Chicontepec's ambitious exploitation program which tried to compensate country's oil production due to the natural depletion of their southern main oilfields. To date, this effort has resulted into the increment of about 30% oil production output. However, the expectation around this geologically-complex basin is still very high.

General characteristics of Chicontepec reservoirs, which are associated to a turbiditic origin, are low porosity/permeability ratios, texturally immature, highly heterogeneous, and mineralogically suitable for easier develop formation damage. These challenging characteristics make this reservoir often to be referred as an unconventional petroleum resource.

Hydraulic fracturing is commonly applied to these reservoirs in order to produce oil at commercial rates. However, it is still unclear what is the reaction among stimulation fluids employed (e.g. gels, emulsions, foams) in contact with the reservoir minerals (both detritic and authigenic). As a first look, it is expected that these reservoirs could have developed damage, due to their authigenic clay content, which may negatively reacted with stimulation fluids. The current high declination rates would probably be suggesting that the damage actually exists.

Furthermore, knowing what the implications are in employing incompatible fluids into the formation mineralogy is yet an area of opportunity to be explored by PEMEX specialists. Because of its low-permeability proper nature, the Chicontepec reservoirs need to be stimulated by the best suitable technique for make more efficient the hydrocarbon recovery. Enhancing oil recovery would probably be the key to make this unconventional project commercially more viable.

A detailed characterisation of the reservoir rock is planned to be accomplished in this project. From which, through a series of laboratory tests, it is going to be possible to distinguish the most suitable substance (s) to be used as stimulation fluid.

The broad activities planned to be completed in this project are:

  • Characterise reservoir rock, in terms of its pore geometry, mineralogical content and petrophysical character.
  • Run a series of laboratory test experiments to find out the most suitable material (s) for enhancing hydrocarbon recovery.

The general aims of this project are:

  • Enhance the stimulation practices in unconventional siliciclastic, oil-bearing resources as of Chicontepec.
  • Improve the hydrocarbon recovery, with the intention of making this kind of reservoirs economically more attractive.
  • Determine, through a series of experiments, the most suitable, friendly, cost-effective substance to be employed as stimulation fluid in Chicontepec reservoirs.

Qualifications

  • BSc Geological Engineering (1999), Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico
  • Diploma Reservoir Petrophysical Characterisation (2004), NExT Consortium, Mexico
  • MSc Subsurface Geosciences (2007), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh campus, UK