Impact, Mitigation & Optimization Strategies When Low Oil Prices Alter Long-term SAGD Project Implementation

While steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a commercially proven process for heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs with high ultimate recovery, it is also energy intensive and only considered to be economic when oil price exceeds a threshold. Under low price conditions, steam injection can be reduced or completely stopped for a period of time and operations can resume once prices improve. Since the performance and efficiency of the process may become significantly impaired compared to continuous steam injection, it is essential to evaluate and optimize the operating strategy when steam injection is re-initiated.

This webinar will provide insights into the impact of steam injection interruptions on SAGD project performance. Field scale reservoir simulations of the process have been conducted with Athabasca type oil sand models with two different geological formations in order to investigate the optimum operating strategy. An economic model is employed to evaluate the impact of operating strategy on the net present value (NPV). Despite the complex behaviour of the SAGD process, an optimum operation interruption duration can be determined where the impact to NPV or oil recovery is limited. During this webinar we will explore the optimum length of interruption and how this is influenced by the initial period of steam injection.