Page 29 - Sphere No.14 (Jul 2005)

STEAMING AHEAD
situ extraction, is used for these deeper
reserves. The accompanying sidebar
shows how steam assisted gravity
drainage (SAGD), the leading in-situ
production technique, works.
Husky’s oil sands strategy
Much development work will be neces-
sary to turn on the oil sands tap and keep
it running. Husky Energy is at the fore-
front as the oil industry moves in this new
direction. With five leases covering more
than 425,000 acres containing more than
33 billion barrels of bitumen, the oil
sands of northern Alberta constitute a key
strategic development area for Husky.
Husky’s first major development is the
Tucker Oil Sands Project, located 30 kilo-
metres northwest of Cold Lake, Alberta.
The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
approved this project in June 2004, giving
the green light for Husky to start imple-
menting its strategy for commercial in-
situ bitumen production.
Construction of the Tucker facility is
well advanced and commissioning is
scheduled for late 2006. Oil will start to
flow about three to six months after that.
On current projections, production will
exceed 30,000 BPD and Husky forecasts
that total production will reach 352 mil-
lion barrels over a 35-year project life.
Tucker is Husky’s first venture into oil
sands but it is only part of the company’s
long-term strategy. The Sunrise Oil
Sands Project is next in line. Husky has
58,000 acres of very high quality oil
sands at Sunrise, promising vast reserves
with lower unit operating costs. This site
is projected to produce 3.2 billion barrels
over 40 years. Husky has applied for
approval for a phased project that will
eventually produce 200,000 BPD and is
currently undertaking the concept devel-
opment work to support it.
And there is still more. Husky is now
evaluating the commercial prospects of its
other three oil sands leases, with a view to
developing production capability as the
Tucker and Sunrise projects go on-stream.
Oil for the future
Despite recurring fears that the world’s
oil wells are drying up, resulting in global
energy shortages, the future looks bright.
We will be using oil for the foreseeable
future, though it is increasingly likely to
come from non-traditional sources.
Global energy expert Peter Odell of
Erasmus University in Rotterdam has
recently published a new book on energy
supplies with the unequivocal title “Why
Carbon Fuels Will Dominate the 21st
Century’s Energy Economy”. In it, he
argues that conventional oil supplies will
not peak until nearly mid-century, while
unconventional sources, of which
Canada’s oil sands are the most important,
will peak only at the end of this century.
So it looks as though the oil will be
flowing for a long time to come. And
much of it will be flowing from the oil
sands sites now being developed by
Husky Energy.
How Husky gets the oil flowing
N its naturally occurring state, the
oil found in the bitumen of oil
sands deposits is not viscous
enough to flow to a well from which
it can be pumped out. More complex
technologies are required to obtain
oil from these reserves.
Open-pit mining is the method
used for some oil sands reserves.
But at Tucker, Husky’s first oil sands
production site, the bitumen from
which the oil is obtained is buried
too deep to be extracted this way.
So Husky is using the newer technol-
ogy of steam assisted gravity drainage
(SAGD) to recover the bitumen.
SAGD is a form of thermal recovery
technology, in which pairs of horizontal
wells are drilled into the oil sands. The
upper well is the “injector”, the lower
is the “producer”. Steam produced by
a series of huge generators is intro-
duced into the injector well of each
pair by a continuous injection process,
to heat the bitumen and make it more
viscous. Gravity then ensures that the
bitumen mixed with condensed steam
drains into the producer well, from
which it can be pumped to the surface.
Once it has been brought to the
surface, the bitumen is blended with
a diluting solution that means it can
flow through a conventional oil
pipeline. The SAGD process, in
which oil is pumped from a well, is
closer to conventional oil production
than the open-pit mining method.
Steam rises and heats bitumen
Heated bitumen
flows to well
DYNAMICS OF THE
SAGD STEAM CHAMBER
SPHERE 27
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF HUSKY ENERGY
I