THAI™ - Increasing the Potential of the Canadian Oil Sands
The Canadian Oil Sands
The Canadian oil sands is the world’s largest accumulation of hydrocarbon. Located in northeastern Alberta, the oil sands underlie approximately 140,000 square miles, an area the size of Florida, and contain bitumen, a thick tar-like hydrocarbon which requires significant upgrading. Petrobank’s WHITESANDS assets are situated in the heart of the in-situ oil sands development fairway.
Mining
When oil sands have less than 75 metres of overburden, mining is used to extract
the bitumen. Mining requires massive trucking operations to haul the oil sands for processing.
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Steam-based technologies
Several technologies rely on steam to heat and soften the bitumen underground
allowing it to flow to production wells. Both CSS and SAGD are considered economic only in very high-grade, relatively homogeneous oil sands reservoirs,
which is only about 10 percent of the resource base, and can only recover 20-50 percent of the bitumen-in-place.
THAI™ has the potential to operate in lower pressure, lower quality and deeper reservoirs than current steam-based processes.
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THAI™ has the potential to recover 70-80 percent of bitumen in place versus 20-50 percent from current in-situ technologies. THAI™ could also be applied to previously steamed reservoirs to recover bitumen left behind by CSS and SAGD.
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THAI™ has the potential to operate in reservoirs where other steam-based recovery methods cannot. Unlike current steam-based technologies,
THAI™ is not as impacted by the geologic variables found in the oil sands.
Thinner reservoirs (less than 10 metres) can be a target for THAI™ as only one horizontal well is required compared to two horizontal wells with SAGD. THAI™ is not as sensitive to the presence of top or bottom water, which act as heat thief zones, nor the absence of top gas that provides some reservoir pressure. One of the main geological variables of the oil sands is large shale lenses which act as barriers for steam migration. These shale lenses are less of a concern with THAI™ as the process creates its own pressure regime and operates at very high temperatures, allowing heat to penetrate past these potential barriers.
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