1. A method of recovering gas from a gas-bearing subterranean formation comprising:
a) producing gas from an upper portion of the formation; and
b) injecting a waste gas into a lower portion of the formation to dispose of the waste gas, said waste gas being injected within a 3000 foot (914 m) radial distance from the production of the gas.
2. The method of claim 1 where the production of gas is through one or more production wells and the injection of waste gas is through one or more spaced-apart injection wells.
3. The method of claim 2 wherein each production well is in fluid communication with the upper portion of the formation, and each injection well is in fluid communication with the lower portion of the formation and a substantial portion of the waste gas injected through a selected injection well is stored outside the drainage volume of the production well closest to the selected injection well.
4. The method of claim 2 wherein at least one of the one or more injection wells is a deviated well.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the steps of producing gas and the injection of waste gas are carried out within one or more wells.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the produced gas is produced through a production zone of a well and the injection of waste gas is through an injection zone of the well, and the horizontal distance between the top of the injection zone and the bottom of the production zone being at least distance D in which
D=h tan \u03b8
where:
\u03b8=Arccos (0.64h23A13R13(kykh)23(IW)13
h is the vertical distance from the bottom of the production zone to the top of the injection zone;
R is a recovery factor for the well drainage volume;
A is the drainage area of the well;
kykh is the ratio of vertical permeability to horizontal permeability of the formation; and
IW is the ratio of waste gas injection rate to produced gas production rate.
7. The method of claim 2 in which one or more production wells are placed in the upper portion of the formation, and one or more injection wells are placed in the lower portion of the formation, with the horizontal displacement between the injection through any one of the injection wells and the production through any one of the production wells being at least a distance D in which
D=h tan \u03b8
where:
\u03b8=Arccos (0.64h23R13A13(kykh)23(IW)13
h is the vertical distance from the bottom of the producing zone of the producing well
to the top of the injection zone of the injection well;
R is a recovery factor for the well drainage volume;
A is the drainage area of the production well;
kykh is the ratio of vertical permeability to horizontal permeability of the formation; and
IW is the ratio of waste gas injection rate to produced gas production rate.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein the produced gas is natural gas.
9. The method of claim 8 wherein the natural gas comprises an acid gas.
10. The method of claim 9 wherein the acid gas is at least one of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.
11. The method of claim 9 further comprises removing at least part of the acid gas from the natural gas and using the removed acid gas as the source of waste gas for injection into the subterranean formation.
12. The method of claim 9 wherein the acid gas is injected into the formation simultaneously with production of the natural gas from the formation.
13. The method of claim 1 in which the relative permeability of the waste gas is reduced in the region of the formation above injection of the waste gas into the formation by injecting a fluid agent into the formation immediately above the injection of waste gas into the formation.
14. The method of claim 13 wherein the fluid agent is water.
15. The method of claim 13 wherein the fluid agent is foam.
16. The method of claim 1 wherein the viscosity ratio of the injected waste gas to the produced gas (\u03bcinj\u03bcdisp) is greater than 1.05.
17. The method of claim 1 wherein the density ratio of the injected waste gas to the produced gas (\u03c1inj\u03c1disp) is greater than 1.05.
18. A method of recovering hydrocarbons from a subterranean formation, comprising:
a) producing the hydrocarbons from the upper portion of the formation, the hydrocarbons comprising an acid gas;
b) separating the acid gas from the hydrocarbons; and
c) placing at least a portion of the separated acid gas into the lower portion of the formation, wherein said acid gas placement helps maintain the formation pressure.
19. The method of claim 18 wherein the separation of acid gas is performed in a well into which the hydrocarbon is produced.
20. The method of claim 18 wherein the separation of acid gas is performed after the hydrocarbon is passed to the earth’s surface.
21. The method of claim 18 wherein the acid gas and hydrocarbons are produced into a well, the acid gas is separated from the hydrocarbons in the well, and the separated acid gas is placed into the lower portion of the formation from the same well.
22. The method of claim 19 wherein the well is deviated.
23. The method of claim 22 in which the deviated well contains production perforations through which the hydrocarbons are produced and injection perforations through which acid gas is placed into the lower portion of the formation, and the horizontal distance between the top of the injection perforations and the bottom of the production perforations being less than 3000 feet (914 in).
24. The method of claim 23 wherein the horizontal distance between the top of the injection perforations and the bottom of the production perforations is less than 2000 feet (610 m).
25. The method of claim 23 further comprising injecting into the formation between the top of the acid gas injection perforations and the lower end of the production perforations a permeability reducing agent to reduce the relative permeability of the acid gas in the region between the acid gas injection perforations and hydrocarbon production perforations.
26. The method of claim 25 in the permeability-reducing agent is water.
27. The method of claim 25 in the permeability-reducing agent is foam.
28. The method of claim 18 wherein the hydrocarbons are produced into a first well and the acid gas is placed into the lower portion of the formation from a second well.
29. The method of claim 16 in which the relative permeability of the acid gas is reduced in the region of the formation above injection of the acid gas into the formation by injecting a fluid agent into the formation immediately above the injection of acid gas into the formation.
30. The method of claim 29 in which the fluid agent is water.
31. The method of claim 29 in which the fluid agent is foam.
32. The method of claim 18 wherein the hydrocarbons are produced from the formation for a desired period of time prior to commencement of acid gas placement into the formation.
33. The method of claim 18 in which the formation is anticlinal and the production of hydrocarbons is from a plurality of production wells positioned generally in the interior portion of the formation and the placement of acid gas into the formation is from a plurality of injection well that are placed generally at the peripheral region of the formation.
34. The method of claim 18 in which the formation is monoclinal and production of hydrocarbons is from a plurality of production wells that are placed in the updip portion of the monocline formation, and placement of acid gas is through a plurality of injection wells placed in the downstructure portion of the formation in a line-drive configuration.
35. The method of claim 18 in which the formation is already partially depleted by existing production wells, and in which some of said existing wells are converted to injection wells.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A method comprising the steps of:
receiving a request over a network from a user for data related to a context, wherein the request is a URL comprising a context query, wherein the context query comprises at least one context criteria;
parsing and translating, via the network, the at least one context criteria, whereby the at least one context criteria is parsed and translated to a standardized format;
disambiguating, via the network, the at least one parsed and translated context criteria, whereby the at least one parsed and translated context criteria is resolved to canonical values;
formulating a network data query based on the at least one disambiguated context criteria so as to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context query so as to identify at least one data object that relates to the at least one disambiguated context criteria;
checking permissions, via the network, relating to the at least one data object to determine if the user is permitted to access the at least one data object;
if the user is permitted to access the at least one data object, transmitting, over the network, a reference to the at least one data object over the network to the user, wherein the reference to the at least one data object contains sufficient information to enable the user to access the at least one data object over the network.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one context criteria are related to one another within the context query using relational operators, wherein the relationships between the criteria are used in formulating the query.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one context criteria are formatted as a string of at least one criteria-attributevalue pairs in the format:
http:<query server><criteria-attribute><value>
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one context criteria is an identifier for a second context query stored on the network.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one context criteria is a relational reference, wherein the disambiguation step resolves the relational reference to a canonical value.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one context criteria is an aliased reference, wherein the disambiguation step resolves the aliased reference to a canonical value.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein the network data query is formulated to a use global index of data available to the network to search for to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein only references to data objects having at least a threshold number of parallel paths of associations to the at least one context criteria are transmitted to the user.
9. The method of claim 1 wherein only references to data objects having at most a threshold number of degrees of separation from the at least one context criteria are transmitted to the user.
10. The method of claim 1 wherein the reference to the at least one data object is a hyperlink embedded in a webpage, wherein the webpage is transmitted to the user.
11. A system comprising:
a context query receiving module that receives requests over a network users for data related to a context, wherein each request is a URL comprising a context query, wherein the context query comprises at least one context criteria;
a context query parsing module that parses and translates the at least one context criteria in each request received by the context query receiving module, whereby the at least one context criteria is parsed and translated to a standardized format;
a context criteria disambiguation module that disambiguates the at least one parsed and translated context criteria in each request parsed by the context query parsing module, whereby the at least one parsed and translated context criteria are resolved to canonical values;
a network data query module that formulates queries for each request disambiguated by the context criteria disambiguation module, wherein for each request, a query is formulated based on the at least one disambiguated context criteria so as to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context query so as to identify at least one data object that relates to the at least one disambiguated context criteria;
a permission checking module that check permissions relating to the at least one data object identified by each query formulated by the network data query module to determine if the user that submitted the request is permitted to access the at least one data object;
a data transmission module that transmits, for each request checked by the permission checking module, a reference to the at least one data object over the network to the user, wherein the reference to the at least one data object contains sufficient information to enable the user to access the at least one data object over the network.
12. The system of claim 11 wherein the at least one context criteria within at least some requests are related to one another within the context query using relational operators, wherein the relationships between the criteria are used in formulating the query.
13. The system of claim 11 wherein the at least one context criteria within at least some requests are formatted as a string of at least one criteria-attributevalue pairs in the format:
http:<query server><criteria-attribute><value>
14. The system of claim 11 wherein the at least one context criteria within at least some requests are identifiers for a second context query stored on the network.
15. The system of claim 11 wherein the at least one context criteria within at least some requests is a relational reference, wherein the context criteria disambiguation module resolves the relational references to canonical values.
16. The system of claim 11 wherein the at least one context criteria within at least some requests is a relational reference, wherein the context criteria disambiguation module resolves the aliased references to a canonical value.
17. The system of claim 11 wherein the network data query module formulates at least some queries to a use global index of data available to the network to search for to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context.
18. The system of claim 11 wherein only references to data objects having at least a threshold number of parallel paths of associations to the at least one context criteria transmitted to users by the data transmission module.
19. The system of claim 11 wherein only references to data objects having at most a threshold number of degrees of separation from the at least one context criteria are transmitted to users by the data transmission module.
20. The system of claim 11 wherein for at least some requests, the references to the at least one data object is a hyperlink embedded in a webpage, wherein the webpage is transmitted to the users by the data transmission module.
21. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for a method comprising the steps:
receiving a request over a network from a user for data related to a context, wherein the request is a URL comprising a context query, wherein the context query comprises at least one context criteria;
parsing and translating, via the network, the at least one context criteria, whereby the at least one context criteria is parsed and translated to a standardized format;
disambiguating, via the network, the at least one parsed and translated context criteria, whereby the at least one parsed and translated context criteria is resolved to canonical values;
formulating a network data query based on the at least one disambiguated context criteria so as to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context query so as to identify at least one data object that relates to the at least one disambiguated context criteria;
checking permissions, via the network, relating to the at least one data object to determine if the user is permitted to access the at least one data object;
if the user is permitted to access the at least one data object, transmitting, over the network, a reference to the at least one data object over the network to the user, wherein the reference to the at least one data object contains sufficient information to enable the user to access the at least one data object over the network.
22. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the at least one context criteria are related to one another within the context query using relational operators, wherein the relationships between the criteria are used in formulating the query.
23. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the at least one context criteria are formatted as a string of at least one criteria-attributevalue pairs in the format:
http:<query server><criteria-attribute><value>
24. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the at least one context criteria is an identifier for a second context query stored on the network.
25. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the at least one context criteria is a relational reference, wherein the disambiguation step resolves the relational reference to a canonical value.
26. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the at least one context criteria is an aliased reference, wherein the disambiguation step resolves the aliased reference to a canonical value.
27. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the network data query is formulated to a use global index of data available to the network to search for to search, via the network, for user profile data, social network data, spatial data, temporal data and topical data that is available via the network and relates to the context.
28. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein only references to data objects having at least a threshold number of parallel paths of associations to the at least one context criteria are transmitted to the user.
29. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein only references to data objects having at most a threshold number of degrees of separation from the at least one context criteria are transmitted to the user.
30. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the reference to the at least one data object is a hyperlink embedded in a webpage, wherein the webpage is transmitted to the user.