Time scales for steam injection and bitumen production in steam-assisted gravity drainage

Despite technical and economic success of Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), improvements of its thermal efficiency as reflected by the steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) present challenges. Given that the SOR is a measure of the ratio of the energy invested to the energy (chemical energy in oil) produced and emissions intensity, there is strong motivation to reduce the SOR since the lower the SOR, the lower is the energy invested and emissions produced per unit oil produced. However, there appears to be few directions for modifying SAGD to improve the SOR by adjusting the steam injection strategy or fluid production strategy alone. In this research, multiple steam components and multiple bitumen components are used in a thermal reservoir simulation model to understand the time scales of steam flow and bitumen mobilization, drainage, and production. The results reveal that immediate bitumen response is observed near the well and in the steam-trap liquid pool above the production well whereas the time scale between steam stimulation and bitumen response can be as high as hundreds of days. This brings into question the meaningfulness of the steam-to-oil ratio as a control variable for behaviours far from the well pair. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Despite the technical and economic success of SAGD, improving its thermal efficiency by reducing the steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) faces challenges. The study reveals time scales between steam stimulation and bitumen response can be as high as hundreds of days, calling into question the significance of using SOR as a control variable for behaviors away from the well pair.