The majority of SAGD development to date has been concentrated in the McMurray Formation in the Eastern Athabasca fairway. More recently operators have identified projects with considerable resource located in shoreface sands of the Grand Rapids Formation in the Wabasca area. Laricina Energy's Germain thermal project in the Grand Rapids has associated basal water underlying much of the reservoir. In this paper the authors show that SAGD can be configured to maximize bitumen recovery for such reservoirs based on laboratory and new simulation studies. The result is a SAGD configuration where the producers are placed at the base of porosity, within the basal water zone.
Laricina Energy Ltd.'s Germain project is located in the West Athabasca Oil Sands region approximately 100 km southwest of the community of Fort McMurray. Positioned in Townships 83–85, Ranges 21–22, west of the 4th Meridian, the total land base in the area is 63 sections. The primary zone of interest is the Grand Rapids Formation. It is estimated that there are approximately 2.5 billion barrels of bitumen in place with a thickness greater than 10 m within the lease area in the Grand Rapids Formation.
The upper Grand Rapids sand is a regional marine deposit at an average depth of 225 m. Its unique features – clean sand with homogenous and continuous reservoir pay – results in a predictable and consistent reservoir that extends across many townships. A thin bottom water leg in communication with the bitumen is present throughout much of the lease.
The Germain project is in an area that, to-date has been mainly explored and developed for natural gas production from zones other than the Grand Rapids with a few oil sands evaluation wells drilled in the region in the 1970's. Due to the significant increase in activity of oil sands projects in general, the development of oil sands in the Wabasca region is just beginning. Currently, two operators have significant nonthermal heavy oil production in the region from the Wabiskaw Member of the Clearwater Formation.
Laricina Energy has submitted an application for regulatory approval to build and operate a steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) project in the Germain area.
The current development plan is a phased approach starting with a small commercial demonstration project followed by commercial development that will increase production to over 100,000 barrels per day of bitumen.
Figure 1 describes the general stratigraphy in the area of Laricina Energy's Germain project. In north-east Alberta, the Mannville Group, composed primarily of unconsolidated clastic sedimentary rocks, is divided into three formations. From oldest to youngest these formations arc: the McMurray. the Clearwater. and the Grand Rapids.
The Mannville sediments rest unconformably on the carbonates of the Devonian Wintcrbum Group. The unconformity at the base of the Mannville was formed during a period of subaerial exposure and erosion. The Mannville Group is conformably overlain by the Cretaceous Joli Fou Formation shales and Viking sand. The overlying Colorado shales are usually truncated by Quaternary glacial deposits.
