Page 41 - The Houstonian Review - Fall Issue 2022 | Sintia Solis

Steam is used to warm the Bitumen so it can be week before they were fixed, resulting in losses of up
pumped to the surface. The operator drills a pair of to $6,000,000 for the oil company. This changed when
wells that sit one above the other in the formation. Colombian Born Diego Vargas Quintero came up with
The top well is called the injection well. The a gutsy and clever solution.
bottom well is called the production well. Steam
is injected into the top well. The steam moves into Typically, a metal sleeve is welded over the
the formation, warming the bitumen. With the help compromised area or a heavy metal clamp is placed
of gravity, the bitumen flows to the production well over the damaged pipelines. While there are situations
along with condensation from the steam, then where these methods are appropriate, there are
the bitumen and condensed steam or water are several drawbacks that are inherent to using these
pumped to the surface. The bitumen and water two repair methods. Oftentimes, a welded sleeve may
are sent by pipeline to a central processing facility be unsuitable because a pipeline field welder is not
for separation. The water can then be recycled, available.
converted to steam, and sent back to the well site The clever solution from Mr. Vargas Quintero has
to be used again in production. helped save multiple millions of Dollars to the state

The biggest challenge extracting bitumen is that owned oil company of Colombia, yet mankind benefited
high temperatures, high pressure and corrosive even more from his solution. Faster repairs mean less
chemicals, damage the pipelines on a regular environmental remediation. Site-remediation is the
basis and they need to be repaired as fast as process of removing polluted or contaminated soil,
possible. Every time a pipeline is damaged, both sediment, surface water, or groundwater, to reduce
ducts need to be shut-down to avoid spillages and the impact on people or the environment. A polluted
a repair team needs to be deployed to the site to site can have a serious impact on human health,
repair the conduits. A shut down pipeline costs water supplies, eco-systems and even on building
the oil company an average of $93,000 a day. In structures.
most cases, as pipelines are interconnected up to We should always be grateful to visionaries like Diego
9 pipelines need to be shut-down, this results on Vargas Quintero for coming up with solutions that will
losses close to $900,000 per day. safe guard our planet for future generations.

In the past, these repairs would take up to one

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