N.E.
NORTHEASTERN ALBERTA WELL ACTIVITY JAN/12
JAN/13
Wells licensed
JAN/12
JAN/13
Wells spudded
JAN/12
JAN/13
Rigs released
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Source: Daily Oil Bulletin
Northeastern Alberta
Cenovus expects big things from new projects By Lynda Harrison
Photo: Joey Podlubny
Cenovus Energy Inc. expects Telephone Lake’s reservoir will be at least as good as its producing Foster Creek and Christina Lake projects in terms of continuity, porosity, permeability and pay thickness, a conference has heard. “Those are all very, very comparable for it,” Brian Ferguson, president and chief executive officer, told the CIBC institutional investor conference. The project will also be at least as large as its predecessors, at more than 300,000 barrels per day, said Ferguson. Telephone Lake is further north in the Fort McMurray area, so there will be a somewhat higher pipeline tariff to get production to market, he noted. Infrastructure also will have to be constructed, but Ferguson believes it will be another cornerstone project. “The thing to me that is really important about Telephone Lake and Grand Rapids is the scope and the scale of those projects. Truly world-class,” he said. Telephone Lake is expected to be built over 72 months in two phases starting
with Phase A in 2014, with an estimated operational life of around 40 years. Timing depends on regulatory approvals, projected for receipt in fourth-quarter 2013, as well as on market conditions and corporate sanction. First steam at Phase A is proposed to start in 2018. Field construction of Phase B is forecasted to begin in 2016, with first steam in 2019. The company’s proposed Grand Rapids oilsands project will have a higher steam to oil ratio (SOR) than its existing projects; however, the project will have commercial advantages such as existing infrastructure, and the SOR will still be lower than the industry average, he said. “It is in the exact vicinity—in fact, it’s a little shallower—above our existing Greater Pelican production from the Wabasca,” he added, noting roads, camps, power and pipelines are already in place. Cenov us’s 100 per cent ow ned, 180,000-barrel-per-day Grand Rapids project in the Greater Pelican Lake area will have a different type of reservoir than the company’s other steam assisted gravity drainage
A worker at Cenovus’s Foster Creek development. The company expects Telephone Lake will perform as well as Foster Creek.
(SAGD) projects (Foster Creek, Christina Lake and Narrows Lake), which are old riverbeds stacked on top of one another. Grand Rapids’ reservoir, on the other hand, is an old shoreline, so it is much more homogeneous, but it is also only 20 metres thick compared to the other projects’ 30- or 40-metre-thick reservoirs, he said. Both Grand Rapids and Telephone Lake are in regulators’ hands, and Cenovus expects approval before the end of the first quarter of 2014. Both have a high-quality reservoir, he said. On an industr y-w ide basis,
300,000
barrels per day Expected production at Telephone Lake
Telephone Lake has a top-decile reservoir while Grand Rapids has a top-quartile one, Ferguson noted. Of its $3.6-billion total capital budget for 2013, Cenovus plans to spend $300 million on the two projects this year. Last year, the company drilled 75 stratigraphic (exploration) wells at Grand Rapids, but it doesn’t plan to drill any this year. It drilled 29 strat wells at Telephone Lake last year and anticipates 28 of them in 2013. Ferguson told the conference Cenovus now has nine phases of SAGD production on stream and has regulatory approval for nine more. Among this year’s highlights will be the start-up of its 10th phase, Christina Lake Phase E and initiation of construction of Narrows Lake Phase A—Cenovus’s third thermal oilsands project, he said. The Narrows Lake project is expected to begin producing in 2016 and Grand Rapids in 2017. OIL & GAS INQUIRER • MARCH 2013
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