RE: A bit late ...That extra steam was for running bitumen up to 80-90k bls/day, continue to progress yearly well development , as well as provide some reliability to always keep a min of 72K bls production. Otherwise, (if SOR is 3) everytime a steam generator goes down for maintenace, sagd rates have to drop for the outage. Steamers need to be inspected every 3 years, usually down for at least 2 weeks at a time....sometimes longer to do repairs. If the SORS drop closer to 2 then its not such a big deal but realistically having some spare steam capacity is a good thing. Again, maybe a little bit of shortsightedness on the initial design....NOT a resevoir problem.
Giver