Chhina, Cenovus' Chief Technology Officer, headed key technological advancements in sands industry, including the first commercial -assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operation ter Creek. In this interview read:
Harbir describes his 40+ years of technology opment in oil sands t’s next, technologically and commercially t’s in store for the people who will power the oil sands industry
ewed in November 2022 by Owen Henshaw, tion Engineer at Cenovus and Board member of nadian Heavy Oil Association
You have previously remarked that you worked on 25 unsuccessful pilots before the big success with SAGD at Foster Creek. What made you continue on, pilot after pilot, until you made it work?
The first thing I did this morning when I came to work was list all of the pilots I worked on in the oil sands, and it was actually more than 26.
So, we worked on many pilots in the Athabasca, Peace River, Lloydminster, and Cold Lake areas before Foster Creek. In the beginning, we were all trying to duplicate Imperial, who set the gold standard for thermal recovery by using Cyclic Steam Stimulation, or CSS, in the Clearwater formation. They were able to fracture the formation and use CSS because the Clearwater is tight and you can contain the pressure. When we tried to do the same thing as Imperial, our formations would absorb the steam like a sponge. The McMurray is connected to thief zones. There is lots of water and gas caps. CSS was the wrong recovery method for the McMurray formation
A number of the pilots were technical if not commercial successes. For example, the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority Underground Test Facility (AOSTRA UTF) drilled a mining shaft over 200 meters deep in the Limestone below the oil sands, from the bottom of which we assembled a drill rig and drilled horizontal well pairs up into the McMurray formation. AOSTRA was a Crown corporation set up by Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed in 1974 to commercialize the deeply buried oil sands reservoirs, using matching contributions from industry The pilot at UTF proved the viability of SAGD. It was not set up for commercial operation, only as a pilot.
I learned a lot from each one of them. It helped me understand the reservoir characteristics, and what technology would work I wish our industry would talk more about failures. There aren’t too many papers that talk about failures, but they have so much to teach us. I was in a unique position to learn from all of those until it was very easy for me to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t work at Foster Creek.
To answer your basic question, the reason I didn’t think about the unsuccessful trials was because I knew the resource was so huge, and I knew that AOSTRA was committed to making it work
"I
talk more about failures…they have so much to teach us. I was in a unique position to learn from all of those until it was very easy for me to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t work at Foster Creek."
In all aspects of our operations, we will continue to get better. I can give you one example The first well at Foster Creek had 32 meters of pay (thickness of the oil sands deposit). That well pair would have recovered three to four million barrels of oil. Today we are working with 12 to 25 metres of pay and we will recover more than four million barrels per well pair. Our independent reserves evaluator used to give us a 12-metre cutoff for reserves. That dropped to 10 and now eight metres. I can confidently say our teams will be able to recover from six metres of pay. We did a test about eight years ago at Foster Creek. We tested well pairs at six to seven metres of pay and it turned out to be just fine It’s not something we go after today, but it’s all set up to go after later on.
wish our industry would
What significant technological changes do you think are coming in the heavy oil industry?
Another example is the length of our wells. For the last 25 years, everyone only went to 800 metres horizontal length because that was the limit of good well conformance. Today we have wells 1,600 metres long. In fact, we have drilled 1,600-metre wells at Sunrise where the resource is only 120 metres deep compared to 450 metres at Foster Creek. That’s harder to do because you don’t have the same weight of the pipe on the bit to help you drill. We did that with a slant rig
In Conventional, we have drilled 6,000-metre horizontals. That’s the distance from our downtown office to the Calgary airport. Our drillers have become so good in the last 10 years and that is going to continue.
We are using inflow and outflow control devices today which gives us great control of the wells. We can turn on and off specific sections of the wells. Today, we need workovers to do that- we need to remove the devices from the well, reconfigure them, and put them back downhole. In the future, we will figure out how to do that automatically. Robotics will play a role, both in ICDs/OCDs and elsewhere.
Christina Lake - Courtesy of Cenovus
The other area is netback improvements. We were lucky to get 20% to 25% of the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil from our first project at Foster Creek We have reached upwards of 80% today and will continue to improve that. One way we will do that is through diluent reduction. Refiners don’t like diluent. They want synthetic crude or heavy oil so that they can maximize production of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. When refiners receive our diluted bitumen, they have to spend energy to separate the diluent before they can process the bitumen. We are going to reduce our diluent requirements in the future. We did a pilot test at Foster Creek where we took the API from 9.5 to 17. The pipeline specification for shipping is 19 API which means that with a 17 API product, we could get rid of 80% of our diluent usage That would not only improve our netbacks but also increase pipeline capacity because we won’t be transporting diluent back and forth to our plants.
The other thing is digital technologies. I think we have 10 million data points collected every three seconds between our projects We are going to get better at using that data for forecasting. When are electric submersible pumps likely to fail, when will liners fail, what will the production of redevelopment wells be? Using tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning, we will get better at forecasting those sorts of things. If we can use forecasting to improve our on-time from 94% to 95% or 95.5%, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars in value. That’s the path our company is headed on.
Of course, following through on our ESG commitments will be a huge change. As an engineer, I’ve always believed that 80% of solving a problem is knowing the problem and so greenhouse gases (GHGs) are a challenge but no more difficult than getting SAGD to work. Our company is set up to face it and solve our issues. For example, the company has allocated $1 billion in our current five-year business plan just on GHG-related technologies. The Pathways Alliance is another one of those ways.
The Pathways companies have $24 billion committed to carbon capture and other emissions reduction projects by 2030 Nuclear reactors aren’t something we can do in eight or 10 years, but I feel that’s a real solution. In fact, our company has a percentage of General Fusion, a company that is trying to solve nuclear fusion which would be a huge breakthrough But first let’s do fission. That’s what we need to get to net zero. It won’t help us with our 2035 target, but we do need to start now.
In
I think we still have a long way to go. Especially when it comes to in situ. I consider us in the third to fourth inning There are lots of things we can be innovative in to develop the oil sands like API enhancement or nuclear reactors or data analytics. I see the younger generation coming into our company and I see a lot of smart people thinking outside the box and not waiting for their leaders to tell them what to do. They want to be proud of what they are doing and make a difference There is a lot of game left, basically. By the way, that means that the world needs our oil. I firmly believe that.
In
I would say partly. AOSTRA’s main mandate was to develop technology to commercialize the oil sands, which included both mining and in-situ. SAGD was first piloted at the AOSTRA UTF site, which paved the way for commercial success of the technology. AOSTRA success was also in supporting academia and various scientific research throughout Alberta and Canada. So, when you look at the companies that were successful at SAGD - they were involved in AOSTRA or had students associated with AOSTRA
2011 you said we were in the first inning of technology development of in situ oil sands. Where are we at today?a 2011 interview with the Glenbow Museum for its Oil Sands Oral History Project you talked about the need for an industry-led AOSTRAtype organization. Do you feel as though that has been accomplished with Pathways, COSIA, CRIN, etc.?
AOSTRA II would be an institution whose primary focus is to provide technical solutions to Environment Social Governance (ESG) issues faced by the oil and gas industry Issues, such as reduction of absolute GHG, fresh water usage, land footprint and addressing biodiversity. Industry needs technology development to achieve net zero target by 2050. We need more efficient ways to do CCS, develop uses for CO2 and pursue technologies like, SMNRs and other nuclear solution that will reduce GHGs. AOSTRA II would be a focal point for government funding working jointly with industry, academia and other technical institutions.
Pathways is on the right track They have six major players and it’s CEO-led However, they are focusing their efforts on existing technology like carbon capture. AOSTRA II is still needed for the next generation of ideas. For example, wouldn’t it be great if we could think of a product for the CO2 we produce, like synthetic fuel, or CO2 blended into cement? Our company has a percentage of Svante, which captures carbon dioxide using a solid sorbent instead of amines which could turn out to be a cheaper way to capture CO2. It would be good to find the next generation of ideas like Svante, so I still see a lot of value in establishing the AOSTRA II where there’s some funding mechanism that helps industry advance some of these low probability ideas that aren’t at the execution stage yet and still need to be developed.
Just to give you an idea, we invested more than $500 million through AOSTRA, with much of that going toward development of SAGD and of course that’s generating so much profit now. You don’t need every idea to work, you just need one breakthrough.
" We need smart people with new ideas. That includes graduates from universities, colleges, and the trades. … [oil sands] will be a highly paid industry for many years to come.”
For the last 20 to 25 years, what has kept me awake is people. I feel that on a personal level why I was successful was that I knew something very few people knew. I think our industry is going to go through a lot of the same and people with skillsets needed by this industry will be highly prized and we will be faced by strong competition from other industries. But we don’t see oil and gas going away, I think it’s a great opportunity A typical career is about 40 years. I definitely think this industry will be here for 40 years plus. Companies will need the young generation. The old generation is retiring. We need smart people with new ideas. That includes graduates from universities, colleges, and the trades. Just take the Pathways commitment of $24 billion by 2030 which requires a lot of workers, especially tradespeople It will be a highly paid industry for many years to come.
“I have realized that I can be a great resource and mentor for new graduates all the way up to senior executives … I know this business … I want to set people up for success.”
What keeps you coming back?
These days it’s really the people. I thought I was only good at building projects and oil sands I have realized that I can be a great resource and mentor for new graduates all the way up to senior executives. I underestimated what I can add. I know this business. I want to see our company succeed. I want to set people up for success. I feel really good when I can make a difference that way. Someone asked me what moment I won’t ever forget In 2019, we hit a billion barrels of total production We had barbeques at Foster Creek and Christina Lake to celebrate and during those trips, three women came up to me independently. They said, “Harbir, thanks for starting these projects ” They talked about how they were able to use their careers to give their kids a university or college education. That meant a lot to me. I’ve always felt attached to this company – I want the company set up to succeed after I’m gone, which is a function of the people you leave behind.
What's your advice for people who are starting their careers in the oil industry or thinking about joining the oil industry?
