Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage: A Recipe for Success

In this paper, Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is introduced and its advantages over ordinary steam injection is demonstrated. A simple simulation model is built and three scenarios of natural production, ordinary steam injection, and SAGD are compared in terms of their cumulative oil production and cumulative oil steam ratio. The results show that SAGD can significantly enhance oil production in quite a short period of time. However, since the distance between injection and production wells is short, the oil to steam ratio decreases gradually through time.

Authors:

• Mohsen Ebrahimi

Keywords:

• Thermal recovery
• Steam injection
• SAGD
• Enhanced oil recovery

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