Page 5 - AIF - English

Dry holes are exploratory or development wells found required in the production of refined petroleum product for

to be incapable of producing either oil or gas in the company’s downstream operations.
sufficient quantities to justify the completion as an oil
In situ refers to methods of extracting bitumen or heavy
or gas well.
crude oil from deep deposits of oil sands by means other
Exploratory wells are drilled in a territory without than surface mining.

existing proved reserves, with the intention to discover
commercial reservoirs or deposits of crude oil and/or Overburden is the material overlying oil sands that must
be removed before mining, which consists of muskeg,
natural gas.
glacial deposits and sand. Overburden is removed before
Infill wells are drilled between existing development mining and on an ongoing basis to expose ore.

wells to target regions of the reservoir containing
bypassed hydrocarbon or to accelerate production.
Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a common type
of contract, outside North America, signed between a

Observation wells are used to monitor changes in a government and a resource extraction company that states
producing field. Parameters being monitored include how much of the resource produced each party will receive

fluid saturations and reservoir pressure.
and which parties are responsible for the development and
operation of the resource. The resource extraction company
Service wells are development wells drilled or
does not obtain title to the product; however, the
completed for the purpose of supporting production in company is subject to the upstream risks and rewards. An
an existing field, such as wells drilled for the injection
exploration and production sharing agreement (EPSA)
of gas or water.
is a form of PSC, which also states which parties are

Sidetrack wells are secondary wellbores drilled away responsible for exploration activities.

from an original wellbore. These enable the bypass of Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is an enhanced
an unusable section of the original wellbore or allow
oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and
for exploration of a nearby geological feature.
bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in

Stratigraphic wells are usually drilled without the which a pair of horizontal wells are drilled into the oil
reservoir, a few metres above the other. Low pressure
intention of being completed for production, which steam is continuously injected into the upper wellbore to
are geologically directed to obtain information
heat the oil in the reservoir and reduce its viscosity, causing
pertaining to a specific geologic condition, such as the heated oil to drain into the lower wellbore, from which
core hole drilling or delineation wells on oil sands
it is extracted.
leases, or to measure the commercial potential
(i.e. size and quality) of a discovery, such as appraisal Steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) is a metric used to quantify the
wells for offshore discoveries.
efficiency of an in situ oil recovery process, which measures
the cubic metres of water (converted to steam) required to

Production processes
produce one cubic metre of oil. A lower ratio indicates
more efficient use of steam.
Capacity is the annual average output that may be
achieved from a processing facility, such as an upgrader,
refinery or natural gas processing plant, under ideal Tailings Reduction Operations (TROTM) is a process
involving rapidly converting fluid fine tailings into a solid
operating conditions and in accordance with current design
specifications.
landscape suitable for reclamation. In this process, mature
fine tailings are mixed with a polymer flocculent and

Debottleneck refers to the process of increasing the deposited in thin layers over sand beaches with shallow
production capacity of existing facilities through slopes. The resulting product is a dry material that is

modification of existing equipment to remove throughput capable of being reclaimed in place or moved to another
restrictions or inefficiencies.
location for final reclamation.

Downstream refers to the refining of crude oil and the Utilization is the average use of capacity, and includes the
selling and distribution of refined products in retail and impact of planned and unplanned facility outages and

wholesale channels.
maintenance. More specifically, refinery utilization is the
amount of crude oil and natural gas plant liquids that are
Feedstock generally refers either to i) the bitumen required
run through crude distillation units, expressed as a
in the production of SCO for the company’s oil sands percentage of the capacity of these units.
operations, or ii) crude oil and/or other components

SUNCOR ENERGY INC. ANNUAL INFORMATION FORM 2014 3