SPE ATCE - Reservoir characterization and SAGD

At the recent SPE ATCE, researchers presented how improved reservoir characterization can impact SAGD recovery.

There were a number of very interesting and relevant technical papers on heavy oil presented at the recent 2007 SPE ACTE. There was an afternoon session dedicated to heavy oil recovery covering topics from SAGD, the use of computerized tomography, the application of steam additives, and smart producer wells to increase recovery from mature heavy oil fields.

One paper and presentation titled Effects of Reservoir Heterogeneities on the Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage Process, reiterated a very important concept we have continued to discuss and stress on this site and across our industry; that is the need for comprehensive reservoir planning and characterization as a prerequisite to implementing capital intensive heavy oil drilling and operations projects. Reservoir characterization that captures the real world complexity of the reservoir geology and physics combined with numerical simulation is an invaluable tool to plan, predict, and optimize heavy oil reservoir performance.

Reservoir characterization and the modeling of heavy oil reservoirs has advanced significantly from the early days when reservoir models were fairly simple 2D or 3D layer cakes with constant physical and fluid properties; today we see the application of more sophisticated reservoir models that more accurately represent reservoir heterogeneity and anisotropy.

The point of the paper was that SAGD operations can be developed and managed with much better economics and recovery if you understand the geology and physics of the reservoir and use that to design and incrementally optimize SAGD.

This is yet another example where we can exploit the technology, research, and best practices from conventional oil recovery to get a step increase in heavy oil recovery with improved ROI.

Kambiz.