Innovations in SAGD drilling

Drilling heavy oil SAGD wells has required new approaches over conventional wells. For example SAGD requires a larger number of wellbores that are closely spaced. This has spawned an approach drillers call “pad drilling” where it is not uncommon to have over 10 well injector/producer pairs drilled off a single pad or surface location.

Another innovation of SAGD drilling is to drill a group or “batch” of well segments where the surface hole and subsequent legs are drilled together for all the producer wells on a pad vs. drilling a single well at a time. This approach is taken because the producer wells need to be placed first to better target the injectors.

These approaches create cost and time efficiencies for both the producer and drilling contractor in that they reduce rig time, make drilling crews more efficient, and reduce the time required to bring new wells on line.

I’d encourage you to participate in our SAGD forum to learn more and hear from others trying to optimize their SAGD drilling operations.

Kambiz.