Shell-Approved VIT for SAGD, CSS, and Thermal EOR Operations
In a SAGD well, every degree of heat lost in the vertical section is steam you paid to generate but never delivered to the reservoir. That lost heat shows up in your steam-oil ratio, your fuel bill, your pre-heat timeline, and your GHG intensity numbers.
Vacuum Insulated Tubing eliminates most of that loss. Imex Canada supplies field-proven, Shell-approved VIT engineered for the specific demands of Alberta oil sands and thermal heavy oil operations reducing wellbore heat loss by up to 90% compared to conventional carbon steel tubing.
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How VIT Works
Vacuum Insulated Tubing is a precision-manufactured double-wall pipe. An inner tube carries steam or produced fluids. A concentric outer tube surrounds it, with a carefully engineered annular gap between the two walls. That gap is evacuated to a high vacuum and hermetically sealed.
The vacuum does the work. Heat transfers through materials via conduction, convection, and radiation. The vacuum annulus eliminates conduction and convection almost entirely there is no medium for molecular vibration or fluid circulation. Only radiation remains, and the annular geometry limits even that.
Two additional engineering features inside the annulus protect thermal performance over the life of the well:
Multi-layer insulation (MLI): Reflective insulating sleeves wrapped around the inner tube further suppress radiation-based heat transfer and maintain consistent performance even if vacuum quality degrades slightly over time.
Getter materials: A reactive getter compound chemically binds any residual or outgassed molecules inside the sealed annulus, continuously preserving vacuum integrity across decades of wellbore operation.
The result is a tubing assembly with effective thermal conductivity approaching that of a vacuum flask and heat loss reductions of up to 90% versus conventional tubing.
The Connection Advantage
The weakest thermal link in any VIT string is the connection. Where two joints meet, a short length of uninsulated steel creates a thermal bridge that aggregates into meaningful heat loss across a full string.
Imex Canada's premium VIT is designed with only one leak path per connection, made on the inside tube using a semi-premium threaded connection. This minimizes the exposed uninsulated length at each joint interface, significantly reducing thermal bridging compared to standard externally-shouldered connection designs. The simplified running procedure also reduces field installation errors that can compromise connection integrity.
Standard threaded connections are also available where the application allows.
Proven Operational Results
Operators using Imex Canada VIT consistently achieve:
- Up to 90% reduction in wellbore heat loss versus conventional carbon steel tubing
- Up to 30% improvement in steam-oil ratio (SOR)
- Pre-heat periods as short as 75 days compared to three to five months with bare tubing
- Measurably lower natural gas consumption and water usage per barrel produced
- Reduced thermal stress on production casing and cement, improving long-term wellbore integrity
Applications
Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) Alberta Oil Sands
SAGD is the primary application for VIT in Canada. In SAGD operations, steam is injected at 200–240°C to mobilize bitumen in the Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River oil sands. The vertical section of the injector wellbore is where the majority of heat loss occurs from surface down to the heel of the horizontal lateral, through cold overburden that continuously draws thermal energy away from the steam string.
VIT deployed in the injector's vertical section preserves steam quality and temperature, delivering higher-enthalpy steam to the reservoir and allowing the SAGD steam chamber to develop more efficiently. The reduced steam volume requirement per unit of oil produced directly lowers both operating costs and GHG emissions.
Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS)
In CSS operations common in Cold Lake and Peace River heavy oil plays steam is injected in cycles: inject, soak, produce. VIT reduces the steam volume required per cycle, shortens soak periods, and protects the production casing from the cumulative fatigue of repeated high-temperature thermal cycling over the well's life.
Deep Geothermal Wells
As Canadian geothermal development accelerates particularly in British Columbia and Alberta VIT is increasingly specified for closed-loop deep borehole heat exchangers. VIT on the inner string thermally isolates the downgoing hot fluid from the cooler returning fluid, maintaining the temperature differential that determines how much energy is recovered at surface.
Other Thermal Applications
VIT is also used in any well where maintaining produced fluid temperature from reservoir to surface is operationally critical: heavy oil wells where viscosity must stay above a minimum threshold during production, deep wells where wax or hydrate formation is a risk, and permafrost environments where heat loss to frozen overburden is exceptionally severe.
Technical Specifications
- Construction: Double-wall, enclosed and welded
- Insulation: High-vacuum annulus + multi-layer insulation sleeves
- Vacuum maintenance: Advanced getter materials long-term vacuum integrity
- Connection type: Semi-premium (single inside-tube leak path); standard connections available
- Leak paths per joint: 1 (premium)
- Certification: Shell-approved manufacturing (joint-venture facility)
- Applications: SAGD injector/producer, CSS, geothermal, thermal EOR
- Configuration: Dual-string and single-string options
Vacuum Insulated tubing (VIT) reduces heat loss in steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operations, reducing steam consumption; therefore making wells more energy, time and cost efficient.
In SAGD operations, steam is injected into the ground to heat the bitumen, increasing its mobility so it can be extracted through a producer well. Both wells must be heated prior to use - a process that can take up to five months.
As steam travels down the well to the bitumen-bearing zone, it loses heat. Frequently additional steam is injected to make up for this heat loss, but Vacuum Insulating Tubing (VIT) significantly reduces the need for adding additional steam, in turn reducing the consumption of water and natural gas.
By reducing heat loss, significantly less natural gas is needed to heat the water involved in SAGD operations. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, because less steam is needed to soften the bitumen, the quantity of water used is also reduced. Research suggests, that wells equipped with VIT may need as little as 75 days of "pre-heating," saving time, water and fuel required for wells to begin production.
Unlike conventional VIT, Imex Canada's new premium VIT has only 1 leak path per connection, which further reduces heat loss. The simple running procedure and durability will save you time and money. With premium VIT, the connection is made on the inside tube with our semi premium connection.
VIT with other connections is also available.
