Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage) has an­nounced the com­mis­sion­ing of a steam gen­er­a­tor aimed at sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prov­ing oil re­cov­ery in the For­est Re­serve area.

“This rep­re­sents a ma­jor step for­ward in our com­mit­ment to en­hanc­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and max­imis­ing re­source ex­trac­tion,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

Her­itage said the restart of the steam flood is ex­pect­ed to boost oil re­cov­ery rates in the com­ing months and ex­tend the life of the For­est Re­serve oil field.

"We are ex­cit­ed to restart steam in­jec­tion in For­est Re­serve," said Erik Kesku­la, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um. "The com­mis­sion­ing of the steam gen­er­a­tor un­der­scores our ded­i­ca­tion to util­is­ing so­lu­tions to in­crease pro­duc­tion and en­sure the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of our re­sources."

And Her­itage Chair­man Michael Quam­i­na SC not­ed the broad­er sig­nif­i­cance of the ini­tia­tive, say­ing:

"Her­itage is com­mit­ted to find­ing more re­sources, while max­imis­ing pro­duc­tion through the use of en­hanced oil re­cov­ery tech­niques."

Ac­cord­ing to Her­itage, the steam will be in­ject­ed in­to the oil reser­voir, re­duc­ing the vis­cos­i­ty of the heavy crude oil, and en­abling it to flow more eas­i­ly to the pro­duc­tion wells.  

It said that steam in­jec­tion is a proven en­hanced oil re­cov­ery (EOR) tech­nique that has been suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed in var­i­ous Her­itage op­er­at­ed fields.