TURKEY
SYRIA
LEBANON
ISRAEL
JORDAN
Cairo
SAUDI ARABIA
Issaran Oilfield
LIBYA
EGYPT
PHOTO: Rally Energy
SUDAN
Rally uses Canadian-created
CSS technology to produce
Egypt’s viscous oil.
new technology to bring on additional
reserves.”
Although Rally is introducing steam
injection—in the form of cyclic steam
stimulation (CSS)—to the Issaran
deposit, the company is also seeing
the benefits of primary production.
These are both technologies that are
used to produce unconventional oil in
Canada, but there is a significant difference between the reservoirs being
targeted. In Canada, high viscosity
crude is generally produced from
unconsolidated sandstones. In Egypt, it
is flowing from carbonate rock.
“It is a really well-developed carbonate, so it has great storage,” says
Doug Brown, vice-president of production and engineering. He explains the
secret to primary production in the
area is natural fracturing. “[In areas of
fractures], our effective permeability is
thousands of times the matrix permeability of the rock. That’s where we
get our mobility from.”
Rally plans to drill 22 and 20 wells
in 2006 and 2007, respectively, focusing on primary production. However,
Brown explains the real opportunity
will come from CSS, which will be
employed in areas with little or no natural fracturing. This “huff-and-puff”
method was developed in Canada, in
the Cold Lake oilsands deposit. Steam
is injected into the reservoir for a period of time, followed by a soak phase
where the heat thins the oil, and then
a production phase where the product
is pumped to the surface. After a
number of CSS cycles, the company
