SAGD and Well Production from Oil Sands

This is a technical post relating to the production of oil from heavy sand deposits, such as those in Alberta. It is a part of an ongoing series of tech talks, and should probably be read after the post last week on surface mining of those deposits. It is simplified, and relatively short, and so there are some details that are abbreviated, but longer answers can be provided through comments.

Surface mining of oil sand can only progress so far before the gradually deepening seams of the sand become too deep to continue to economically mine them. At the same time the viscosity of the oil is such that it does not flow easily to a conventional type of a well. This is not a new problem for the oil industry, which has had to address issues with the quality of the oil that it finds coming out of a well more than once over the past decades. One of the more easily applicable methods for improving the flow characteristics of the oil is through heating it. (And a quick caveat, the quantities of heat that I am talking about at the moment are significantly different from those that are needed in treating oil shale. I will come to that topic in a couple or three weeks.)

The example of the effect that temperature makes on the ease with which a fluid flows that always first comes to my mind is of a visit to the Nurse