Lately there has been a growing interest in the development of bitumen fields in the world. The Republic of Tatarstan has significant reserves of high-viscosity oils and natural bitumen, which in the future may become an alternative to conventional oil. Undoubtedly, one of the most promising strategic directions of development of fields with hard-to-recover reserves is their development by horizontal wells. For fields and deposits of elongated shape, when the length of the deposit exceeds its width several times, the most expedient is drilling of a heat-injection well with a sinusoidal horizontal section relative to the general direction of the deposit.
The aim of the method is to create a method of effective displacement of bitumen and thereby increasing the extraction rate of bitumen through direct impact on the bitumen and its host sandstone, as well as by reducing the size of the extraction cell to the optimal size, which virtually eliminates uncontrolled output of directed heat flow through tectonic fractures, bypassing the bitumen layer in the extraction element. The method includes drilling of injection, drainage and production wells, injection of coolant through the injection wells, dewatering of the bitumen layer with the drainage well and extraction of bitumen through the production well.
