Abstract
AbstractThe Cold-Lake oil sands contain the second largest reserves volumes among the oil sands deposits in Canada. The bitumen and heavy oil are contained in various sands of the Lower Cretaceous Mannville Group – Clearwater Formation.For the past 30 years, Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) has been the commercial thermal recovery method employed in the Cold Lake area. More recently, Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) has been field tested in number of pilot projects at Cold Lake. Although SAGD has been demonstrated to be technically successful and economically viable, questions remain regarding SAGD performance compared to CSS. A more comprehensive understanding of the parameters affecting SAGD performance in the Cold Lake area is required. Well configuration is one of the major factors which require greater consideration for process optimization.This paper presents a numerical simulation investigation of the impact of using several modified well configurations for SAGD in the Clearwater Formation in Cold Lake area in order to improve the process performance. The technical feasibility of applying each arrangement was evaluated through sensitivity analysis using a fully implicit reservoir thermal simulator (CMG STARS 2009.13). In order to account for frictional pressure drop and heat losses along the wellbore, the fully coupled wellbore/reservoir (discretized wellbore) model was utilized during the course of this study. The reservoir and fluid properties were selected to represent the main bitumen production area at Cold Lake.The new well configurations provide operational and economical enhancement to the SAGD process over the standard well configuration (a horizontal injector lying approximately 5 meters above a horizontal producer) in Cold Lake area. The SAGD process response to different reservoir parameters of the Cold Lake Formation, such as initial injectivity, mobile water saturation, and reservoir heterogeneity has been investigated for the most promising of the new well configurations.
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