Regarding the article "Project Brings Commercial Scale CO2 Miscible Flooding to Canada," I would agree that the PanCanadian Weyburn project is the first large-scale CO2 flood, but it's certainly not the first commercially successful CO2 flood in Canada (OGJ, Oct. 18, 1999, p. 70).
Numac Energy Inc. operates a successful although small CO2 flood in the Joffre area of central Alberta. The CO2 flood was developed in a produced-out and abandoned Viking sandstone pool and currently consists of 24 producing wells and 15 injectors in 12 patterns of various configurations. The initial pilot was developed in 1982 with the most recent three patterns developed in 1997. To date, less than one third of the field has been developed, and the project is expected to have a remaining life of 25 years.
Current production from the field is in the range of 750 b/d of 40° API gravity oil, with over 3 million bbl produced since beginning tertiary production. Numac is currently expanding its CO2 compression and debottlenecking the oil battery to double gas capacity from 10 MMcfd to 20 MMcfd; sufficient to eliminate existing bottlenecks as well as provide adequate compression and processing capacity for future field development. Numac is also undertaking to develop several more patterns next year and expects to be producing well over 1,000 b/d by early 2001.
A key factor in Numac's success is the ability to source approximately 3.5 MMcfd of waste CO2 from a large petrochemical complex only a short distance from the Joffre field which would have otherwise been vented to atmosphere. This virtually eliminates a major capital and operating cost that many other projects are saddled with and often only larger projects can economically justify. Under the right circumstances, even a small CO2 flood scheme can be quite successful!
Don Eckford
Production Engineer
Numac Energy Inc.
Calgary
