Cold Production Recovery

ARC's heavy oil research team has made breakthrough advances in analyzing the cold production recovery process. Cold production is a common method used by oil companies to improve heavy oil recovery rates by producing sand aggressively along with the oil. 

The team made major advances in determining, describing and modeling the key mechanisms controlling the cold production process. These have been incorporated into guidelines and field-scale models now used by a number of major companies for planning and improving well operation and reservoir exploitation strategies.

ARC's advances came about through a unique long-running consortium research program: the AERI/ARC Core Industry (AACI) Research Program, operated by ARC and funded jointly by the Alberta consortium serves the longer term research needs of heavy oil and oilsands industry by developing and evaluating in-situ recovery technologies.

Alberta Research Council. Alberta Research Council 2000 Annual Report. Edmonton: Alberta Research Council, 2000 with permission from the Alberta Research Council.