heavy oil

This paper presents data from both pilot tests and field tests of a recent burner retrofit of a horizontal heater treater at an oil sands field in northern Canada.

With the decline in oil price and typical product differentials, the current year will be particularly challenging for heavy-oil operations.

Hybrid steam/solvent processes have gained importance as a thermal-recovery process for heavy oils in recent years.

An appraisal program involving the Bentley field located on the UK continental shelf has addressed the key technical concerns associated with developing viscous crude in an offshore environment.

An even temperature conformance along the length of the horizontal well is key in maximizing steam-assisted-gravity-drainage (SAGD) production rates.

Europe’s largest onshore oil field, the Patos-Marinza in southern Albania, has been given a new lease on life after seeing production soar from 600 B/D just over a decade ago to more than 20,000 B/D this year.

In the realm of enabling technologies, multiphase flow modeling has proven to be one of the most important to the oil and gas industry. Without it, nearly all subsea wells would be too costly or dangerous to develop.

Initially, polymer flooding had not been considered as a viable enhanced-oil-recover (EOR) technology for Pelican Lake in northern Alberta, Canada, because of the high viscosity of the oil until it was considered in combination with horizontal wells.

Thermal recovery often causes variations in heavy oil viscosity. Yet viscosity is key to recovery, reserves estimation, and ultimately project success. A correlation for predicting viscosity is presented.

Upstream separation processes remain a hot topic for facilities engineers. Striving to design separators with the optimal sizing for a variety of reservoir conditions, increasing water cuts, and dynamic gas/oil/water production characteristics is critical, but challenging.