Cold Lake Cyclic Steam Stimulation: A Multiwell Process

Summary Cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) typically is thought of as a single-well process. At Cold Lake, however, where steam injectivity is achieved by fracturing the formation, considerable interwell communication is observed. The result is usually the watering out of a producer by condensed steam from a neighboring injector. These interwell interactions greatly complicate steam-injection scheduling for commercial projects involving hundreds of wells but do not seem to reduce bitumen production in early cycles. Field experience indicates that steaming rows of wells sequentially with 50% overlap in injection time between adjacent rows significantly reduces water transfer between wells, increases the conformance of the injected heat, and reduces the field's tendency to form communicating well couplets. Exploratory numerical simulations show that the impact of steaming strategy on bitumen production is not significant until later cycles.