Laboratory Procedures for Optimizing the Recovery from High Temperature Thermal Heavy Oil and Bitumen Recovery Operations

Thermal operations such as cyclic steam injection (CSS), steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and steam drive (SD) are used on a worldwide basis to exploit large reserves of heavy oil and bitumen which will comprise the majority of future world oil production in the decades to come. This paper reviews new laboratory protocols that have been developed to aid in the screening of the best reservoir process for exploiting these heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs by thermal means including;