Hot Enough Isn’t Enough: Subcool and Voidage Replacement in Real SAGD
Thermal recovery is often treated as a temperature problem: heat the oil, cut viscosity, and rate follows. Field practice shows that is incomplete. Rate scales with the inverse of viscosity, but delivering heat into a flowing well is a flux problem, not a setpoint problem. A lamp and a jet engine can both sit at 2,000 °C and transfer energy at very different rates. The same gap appears with downhole heaters: claimed temperature is not delivered energy, and the power needed to heat high-water-cut fluids quickly makes the economics thin.
Heat alone is still not enough. Voidage replacement determines whether a steam chamber can grow and whether oil can be produced. In SAGD that constraint is managed through subcool—the difference between produced-fluid temperature and saturation temperature at producer pressure. Operating at 5–10 °C subcool protects liners from live steam plus sand, preserves oil cut, and uses less steam. Higher subcool quenches steam and cuts rate; zero subcool risks liner damage. Steam rate is therefore adjusted to the target: minimum injection to clear water, maximum injection to drive the chamber down, and balanced injection to hold the interface.
Registration closes on Monday, October 19 at 8AM.
Date/Time
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Registration: 11:45 AM MT
Start Time: 12:00 PM MT
End Time: 1:00 PM MT
Location
Calgary Petroleum Club | 319 5 Ave SW, Calgary, AB, T2P 0L5
*This event will be in-person only, and will not be recorded.
Speaker Bio
Robert Logan, MPBE, P.Eng., PE
Robert Logan is a Calgary-based energy executive with more than 20 years of engineering and operating experience in thermal oil sands and SAGD development. A professional engineer licensed in Alberta and Montana, he began his career in field and asset roles on thermal projects across Alberta before moving into senior operating and executive leadership. He served as Asset Manager of the West Ells SAGD project for Sunshine Oilsands from 2011 to 2016, and earlier held roles at Petrobank on the Kerrobert and Whitesands THAI projects, at Statoil’s Leismer SAGD development, and with Petrospec Engineering supporting nearly every thermal oil sands project in Alberta. From 2016 to 2025 he was President and CEO of Greenfire Resources Ltd. and its predecessor companies, which he co-founded, guiding the business through major growth. Robert holds a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Alberta and a Master’s degree in Petroleum and Business Engineering from Delft University of Technology. He is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.
**Please Note
Lunch will be served. Please be sure to include your dietary restrictions during the online registration process so we can do our best to accommodate.
An event reminder will be sent the day before and the morning of the event.
Group Discounts
Group discounts are now available! A discount of 10% will be applied at checkout for groups of 6-9 people, and a discount of 15% will be applied for groups of 10+ people. Please note the discount will only be applied if all tickets are purchased in the same transaction.
If you wish to reserve a table, please email calgarysection@spe.org and specify your company name and the specific event title/date to hold the reservation. Please note that table reservations only apply to groups of 8.
Tiered Pricing
Our Tiered Pricing structure for Calgary Section Technical Luncheons allows us to offer lower prices for SPE Members while ensuring continued value for non-members. The new system includes three pricing tiers, with a limited number of Tier 1 and Tier 2 tickets available to encourage and reward early registration. We hope this creates more flexibility and choice for everyone attending our events. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us at calgarysection@spe.org.
Group Discount (10+ People) · Group Discount (6+) People