Production of highly viscous tar sand bitumen using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) with a pair of horizontal wells has advantages over conventional steam flooding. This paper explores the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as an alternative to the traditional SAGD simulation approach. Feed forward, multi-layered neural network meta-models are trained through the Back-Error-Propaga...

Thermal recovery techniques including Fast-SAGD process increases the production efciency of heavy oil reservoirs. Effective parameters in this study included injection and production rates, height of the injection, production, and offset wells, production and injection cycles, and pressure of the offset wells. In this study, optimization studies were performed. The objective function was defned a...

A thorough understanding of the effects of lean zones and the improvement of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operations with such heterogeneities is critically important for reducing the disadvantages of lean zones. The numerical model shows: (1) SAGD is most influenced by the single-layer lean zone with the above-injector (AI) location; with the decrease of interval distance and increas...

In this paper, Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is introduced and its advantages over ordinary steam injection is demonstrated. A simple simulation model is built and three scenarios of natural production, ordinary steam injection, and SAGD are compared in terms of their cumulative oil production and cumulative oil steam ratio. The results show that SAGD can significantly enhance oil prod...

Solvent–steam mixture is a key factor in controlling the economic efficiency of the solvent-aided thermal injection process for producing bitumen in a highly viscous oil sands reservoir. This paper depicts a strategy to quickly provide trade-off operating conditions of the Expanding Solvent–Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (ES-SAGD) process based on Pareto-optimality. Response surface models are...

With decreasing amounts of conventional energy resources available, production of unconventional oil and gas has become an important new source of energy. Steamassisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a widely used process, allowing the production of very heavy oils. The numerical simulation of SAGD, however, is complex and highly CPU/time intensive. Moreover, the economical cost of this process is ...

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a technique that has been developed to efficiently extract bitumen from deep reservoirs. We propose using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) for real-time monitoring of SAGD wells to maintain optimal operating conditions. Several electrode configurations along the pipelines and measurement strategies are presented and compared.

Production of highly viscous tar sand bitumen using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) with a pair of horizontal wells has advantages over conventional steam flooding. This paper explores the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as an alternative to the traditional SAGD simulation approach. Feed forward, multi-layered neural network meta-models are trained through the Back-...

As a large amount of mobile water exists in the lean zones of oil sands reservoirs, the analytical model considering mobile water can assist in the study of the mechanism on how lean zones affect SAGD performance. In 1981, Butler proposed a theory on the prediction of heavy oil and bitumen production [S1]. In 1991, Butler further obtained the transient expression for temperature distribution du...

Standing at 2.5 trillion barrels, Canada has the largest portion of the world’s ultra-heavy oil and bitumen resources. While shallow heavy oil reserves are extracted from pit mines, deeper reserves can only be extracted through wells. Production requires Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) and Cyclic Steam Simulation (CSS) methods. The optimal placement of wells defines the propagation of st...