Prediction of Oil Sand Permeability

ABSTRACT

Canada has some of the largest oil reserves in the world and most of these reserves are in the oil sands. Oil sand recovery process design relies heavily on the accurate prediction of reservoir transport properties that affect the mass and thermal flow and distribution of reservoir fluids, such as porosity, permeability, thermal conductivity, capillary pressure and relative permeability curves. Accurate prediction of recovery performance is possible only if reservoir transport properties are measured with reasonable accuracy. Accurate estimation of these properties happens through incorporating core analysis. The challenge is that the inherent complexity of oil sands as unconsolidated reservoirs complicates experimental measurement of the properties. Therefore, while these are important properties to know, they are often not measured to the accuracy level required to properly characterize the reservoir

An abstract of this paper is available on GeoConvention Online.