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...

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-Error-Propaga...

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-...

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...

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...

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...

A technique capable of capturing the dynamics of reservoir fluids in the proximity of production wells would provide enormous benefits to the reservoir management. In fact, monitoring can be used to develop a feedback loop between measurements and control technologies to optimize production. This paper validates the feasibility of a borehole radar tool as a permanent down-hole sensor for near-w...

We present a lab-on-a-chip approach to informing thermal oil recovery processes. Bitumen - a major global resource - is an extremely viscous oil which is extracted by injecting steam underground in a process known as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). Here, a microfluidic network saturated with bitumen provides a physical model of the SAGD reservoir; steam is injected into the chip, and th...

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...