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Junior Petrobank Energy out to ‘revolutionize’ oil sands
Gary Park Petroleum News Calgary correspondent
Petrobank Energy and Resources, a small Canadian E&P, has applied to the Energy and Utilities Board to build a C$30 million experimental project to recover heavy oil from the Alberta oil sands.
If approved, the Whitesands project will be the first large-scale field test of a patented air injection technology known as THAI, for Toe-to-Heel-Air-Injection, that uses much less water and natural gas than traditional methods.
Petrobank chief executive officer John Wright said a commercial-scale project would significantly undercut the costs of the emerging steam-assisted gravity drainage technology that requires gas to heat water and produce steam which breaks down the bitumen and allows it to flow. Could cut costs, greenhouse emissions Other benefits could include higher oil recovery, lower production and capital costs, lower greenhouse gas emissions.
With THAI, air is pumped down one vertical well to feed a fire burning deep underground. A second horizontal well would extract the melted bitumen.
A comparable “fire flood” technology has been used before in the oil sands with mixed results.
But Wright believes THAI has the “potential to revolutionize the heavy oil extraction business worldwide, with substantially better economics and less environmental impact than other technologies.”
Petrobank unit Orion Oil Canada expects to start construction in 2004, with initial production of 2,000 barrels per day from its 27,000-acre lease which is believed to hold up to 500 million barrels of reserves.
Petrobank had daily production of 5,129 barrels of oil equivalent in the second quarter, including 1,028 boe from Colombia, where it purchased all the outstanding shares of AEC Colombia last year from EnCana to gain about 900 million barrels of reserves.
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