Investigation of Non-Condensable Gas Behaviour in Thermal Exploitation of Grosmont Reservoir and Its Role and Effect on Reservoir Performance and Simulation History Matching of the Saleski Pilot

The Grosmont formation, a carbonate naturally fractured reservoir in Alberta, Canada, has 400 billion bbl of bitumen resource, which is currently not commercially exploited. Viable exploitation of this reservoir would mean addition of a huge quantity to Canadian oil reserves. Since December 2010, Laricina Energy Ltd. in their Saleski pilot evaluated a bitumen recovery process using steam injection. The pilot was shut down on September 2015 due to low commodity prices. The Saleski Pilot examined Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) and cycle steam injection in Grosmont reservoir. The close to five years operation of Pilot has provided a very invaluable set of data. Some wells in the pilot have proven commercial rates and efficient steam to oil ratio, while some other wells showed less favourable performance. Nevertheless, any future commercial phase in this reservoir would largely benefit from using the Pilot data in order to properly model the reservoir, predict its performance, and subsequently optimize the recovery technology. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Apostolos Kantzas

Student:

Moslem Hosseininejad Mohebati

Partner:

Laricina Energy Ltd

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Natural resources

University:

University of Calgary