Salamander Proprietary Heater Applications | Salamander Advanced Heater Solutions

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Reach farther. Recover more.

Salamander heater technology is versatile by design and can increase heavy oil production, accelerate SAGD production, and eliminate wax problems. Salamander subsea heaters create opportunities to simplify and enhance deepwater projects. Salamander closely-spaced foundry heaters enable recovery of hydrocarbons from immature kerogen-rich shale or heavy oil.

Reservoir and well characteristics where Salamander’s wellbore heating could be considered.

Heavy Oil – Non-Steam

Foamy oil and wormholes with vertical or horizontal well types.
- Reduces oil viscosity by 2-5 orders of magnitude
- Increases oil mobility ratio with higher oil production and lower water cut
- Reduces torque on pump leading to longer pump life
- Equilibrates flowing pressure along the entire lateral (heel to toe) resulting in an uniform drawdown and uniform depletion of reservoir
Heavy Oil – Steam

CSS, SAGD, Steamflood with vertical or horizontal well types.
- Pre-Steaming
  - Uniform heating of interval resulting in uniform oil mobility and improved steam conformance at the start of steam injection
  - Accelerated and uniform hydraulic communication within SAGD pair of wells resulting in earlier oil production (while steam facilities are built)
  - Higher oil recovery (from improved steam conformance)
- Steam-On
  - Increased steam quality at toe, maintenance of good steam conformance leading to increased oil recovery (suppression of steam bypassing)
Heavy Oil – Steam/Solvent

CSS, SAGD, Steamflood + Solvent with vertical or horizontal well types produces the same benefits as for steam-only plus:
- Increased heat (enthalpy) carried by heated solvent leading to lower volume of solvent throughput per barrel of oil and smaller size of surface facilities (lower CapEx)
Heavy Oil or Oil Shale (Kerogen)

In Situ Upgrading / Conversion with vertical or horizontal well types.
- Reservoir heated to temperatures greater than 300 degrees Celsius
  - Heavy oil upgraded to 16-40 °API
  - Kerogen converted to light hydrocarbons
  - Coke residue left in the subsurface
Medium to Heavy oil (10-20 API)

Sand control required with gravel packs, WWS alone or pre-packed screens.
- Sand Control often results in formation damage, even moderate Skin Factors (eg +3 ) which are difficult to measure will significantly reduce oil productivity (- 30%)
  - Minimize pressure drop through damaged zones, increase oil productivity, enable drainage of lower permeability oil bearing sands
  - Sludges and micro-wax precipitates may be also re-dissolved
  - Reduced emulsion tendency downhole
  - Reduced water coning
Extra Heavy oil (API < 10)

Electric submersible pump with vertical or horizontal well types.
- Lower oil viscosity leads to significant improvement in ESP viscosity de-rating factors
- Better head-capacity curve, better motor efficiency
- Fewer pump stages, smaller motors
- ESP’s in wells with oil viscosity over 1000 cP