bottom water, the J wells turn upwards into process to stay further away from the water gas and steam production) and they
the lower-permeability top layer of the zone,” Brissenden explains. “We hope this provide a more tightly sealed system.
reservoir. Today, the company has moved well design will also encourage gravity
away from the multilaterals in favor of drainage to occur in the reservoir, but we “The multilateral wells have non-sealing
simple horizontal wells, but the premise is don’t have any proof of this happening yet.” windows in the casing near the top of the
still the same. reservoir, so there is a greater tendency
It’s in the early stages yet for the J wells—the for gas and steam to be produced back
“The soak radials dipped down into the simple horizontals have been through only prematurely instead of staying in the
basal water zone to ensure that we would one CSS cycle to date. However, Brissenden reservoir where it can do some good.”
always be able to inject steam into the says the wells promise more efficiency than
reservoir, even if we stayed below fracture multilaterals for a number of reasons. The The next phase for Shell will be a wave
pressure. Now that we inject above fracture single horizontals are cheaper to drill, easier steaming strategy involving 32 horizontal
pressure, we don’t need to do this anymore, to control, they allow for casing to be run to wells. Half will be in the J configuration,
and it helps the thermal efficiency of the the bottom of the reservoir (discouraging while the other half will be straight
horizontals. Instead of injecting steam
into all wells on one pad at a time, it will
be injected into one or two rows of wells
at a time.
2315 - 5A Street Phone. 780-955-9393
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“In front of the steaming row, a row of
wells is shut in to prevent interference,”
Brissenden explains, adding that behind
the steaming row is a row of wells that has
just finished steaming, also shut in to
prevent interference. “With this steaming
strategy, steam injection moves over the
field as a wave of heat and pressure. This
approach is similar to that used by
Canadian Natural Resources and Imperial
Oil in their [Cold Lake] CSS operations.”
The wave steaming strategy is set for
execution in summer 2006. By the end of
the year, Shell hopes to apply with
regulators to expand its Peace River
operation from a plant with capacity for
12,000 barrels of bitumen per day to
100,000 barrels per day in a series of phases.
“Originally, we were going to put in a
regulatory application for the
35,000-barrel-per-day Phase 1, but it is
more efficient to put in a larger application
to cover the three phases all the way to
100,000 barrels per day. There’s a lot of
momentum behind it,” Brissenden says,
adding that the well designs to support
the expansion will likely be quite similar to
what the company is using today.
Beyond that expansion, he admits it is
difficult to predict what will happen as
technology—and the market for
energy—evolves.
“After many years of incremental progress
at Peace River, we now have arrived at a
way to produce bitumen reliably and
consistently. The biggest challenge now is
to make bitumen production consistently
profitable in a business environment with
low margins, very volatile bitumen
netbacks and high costs,” he says. “We’ve
had to learn how to do this, and it’s been a
very lengthy process.” ■
