Towards the Development of Bitumen Carbonates: An Integrated Analysis of Grosmont Steam Pilots

The Grosmont Formation in Alberta, Canada is a highly fractured, karstified and vuggy bitumen-rich carbonate reservoir located west of and below the Athabasca oil sands deposit. The bitumen carbonate platform extends about 500 km in length and up to 150 km in width and contains an estimated 64.5 billion m 3 (406.5 billion barrels) of oil. The Grosmont Formation is larger than the combined total of all other known carbonate bitumen deposits in the world. Here, we analyze early Grosmont steam pilots to improve the design of future pilots and commercial development of this massive bitumen deposit. In agreement with the conclusions of earlier analysis of these Grosmont pilots, they were reasonably successful considering the heterogeneous nature of the Grosmont Formation. Operational factors such as poor steam quality, non-optimized high injection pressures and completion issues appear to have heavily impacted recovery performances. Clearly, steam-based recovery operations have good potential for Grosmont, especially considering that it is mature commercial technology. Following an integrated analysis of early Grosmont pilots, we posit that Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) using horizontal wells exhibits greater potential for the development of Grosmont carbonate, compared with Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage technology (SAGD).

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