7 things you need to know about SAGD Infill wells

Field trials of others tell all

Can infill wells save steam costs and improve recovery? Most operators have at least toyed with the idea.

Other operators have already tried infills -- with mixed success. If you ignore their learnings, it might just seem like you're flushing money down the well. You need to learn what others have already tried and measure their success and failure.

Every time an operator intends to play with infill wells he must get permission from the regulator.

Technical papers are fine. Simulations are great. But actually seeing infill strategies in the field takes the surprises out of the equation.

Look back at the field trials of others

It makes sense to see what others have done in the field. A field "look back" needs to consider the operator's intentions and their actual results.

The best way to conduct a look back is to read the application documents of others. These documents show their intentions and promises to the regulator.

They also indicate the actual UWI locations of the proposed operation. Using these locations, you can review injection and production history and draw your own conclusions about success or failure of the field trial.

Ever wonder just what is the right infill strategy? You can find out by reviewing these seven submissions by other operators. Just follow the links to get their application documents.

1.Tougher drilling profiles or more surface area?

How do you get more with less capital and effort? Maybe by changing your well spacing and pad count.

You might perhaps use fewer surface pads, but let each surface pad have wells into more than one down-hole drainage box. It's a farther reach, but perhaps the tougher drilling challenge is cheaper than more surface pads.

2. Performance of infill wells

Call them what you will, infill wells can improve SAGD production with reduced capital.

Infill producers can improve SAGD performance in steam oil ratio (SOR), accelerated production, and incremental recovery.

3. Infills or closer injector spacing?

When is it better to have closely spaced thermal injectors, and when are infill producers good enough?

Read one operator's thoughts on optimizing interwell spacing for new pads based on production results of existing pads.

4. SAGD infills proposed at reduced length

Read about one operator that is concerned about drilling the toe of infill producers into the cold bitumen area. This  toeing into the cold  could reduce recovery. His proposed solution: shorter infill wells.

5. Outboard producers

When are infill wells not infill wells? When they're outboard wells -- infills on the flank of your SAGD pad.

6. Non-condensable gas injection and SAGD infills

One operator believes SAGD infill wells with NCGI combined with a special sense of timing will improve resource recovery by another 30%.

7. SAGD with NCG and CSS infills

This operator believes that there's room for both SAGD and CSS in his reservoir. Reservoir engineers that are trained in only one or the other of these technologies may be missing an important component of recovery.

Infill wells between SAGD patterns are common. Running run some steam into those infills on an intermittent basis is an interesting twist on infills.

And one more bonus submission about horizontal infills.

8. Sub producer infills

Another operator explains the difference between horizontal infill wells, sub-producers and lower development wells among other drilling optimizations.  She is also pressing for more regulatory freedom concerning some of these operations.  She didn't notify any stakeholders, near or far.

We've given you more than 7 submissions that document field trials of steam infills, outboard wells, and additional iterations with NCGI and CSS, but there are many more. Some of these strategies could drastically improve your thermal scheme.

You owe it to yourself and your investors to read the application documents that explore these pilot projects. You decide whether they will work for your field.

You can help yourself to their application documents by using our self serve, secure check out. Follow the links above to buy these documents now.

All these have been passed the theoretical phase and lab test phase. Each has been implemented in the field.

Tags: Thermal, Heavy Oil

Granger Low   Updated 8 Sep 2025

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