The in situ combustion process attained world-wide interest in the early 1950's. The process offered the possibility of recovery of a large fraction of oil from known deposits of heavy oils. By the end of the decade, most of the important features of the process had been investigated and described in the literature.
During the early 1960's, several large-scale commercial applications were started, and are still in operation. But there are probably fewer than ten large-scale operations in the world today.
The small number of commercial developments is a result of several factors. These include: realisation of serious operational problems, high investment and operating costs, discovery of the cyclic steam injection process and realignment of investment priorities caused by offshore and arctic exploration efforts. But improvements in the process continue, and it is likely that in situ combustion will be an important process in world-wide operations in the future.
Le procede de combustion in-situ a atteint un degré d'intêret mondial au début des années 1950. Ce procédé rendait possible la récupération d'un pourcentage élevé de pétrole à partir de dépots connus d'hydrocarbures lourds. La plupart des caractéristiques importantes de procédé ont été étudiées et décrites dans la littérature de 1950 a 1960. Au début des annees 1960, plusieurs applications commerciales a grande échelle ont été entreprises et fonctionment encore. Mais le nombre de réalisations à grande échelle dans le monde entier aujourd'hui est sans doute inférieur à 10.
Plusieurs faits expliquent ce petit nombre de réalisations commercials. Parmi eux, on peut citer: la rencontre de sérieux Problemes d'ordre pratique, les investissements et les coûts de fonctionnement élevés, la découverte du procédé d'injection cyclique de vapeur, et le changement des priorités d'investissement au profit des explorations offshore et arctique.
Cependant des améliorations ne cessent d'être apportées au procédé, et il est probable que la combustion in situ occupera une place importante dans les opérations futures dans le monde entier.
appeared to open the floodgates on the modern literature in the area of thermal recovery of oil.
Both the idea and reduction to practice (although Since the early 1950's there have been over 300 unintentional) of generation of heat within a forma- papers and patents published concerning this broad tion by combustion of a portion of the crude oil field. appears to date to about 1920.'~~ It is virtually certain Since the early 1950's, the bulk of the papers pubthat spontaneous ignition occurred within a number lished on thermal oil recovery methods have conof air injection operations in the United States in the cerned the in situ combustion method and, until the mid and late 1920's. There is clear evid