Abstract: Steam soaking now is the primary method to produce heavy oil. However, there exist two unfavour factors, which are uneven steam injection profile and channeling, to affect the performance of steam soaking. The longer the production histo-ry extends, the more severe the channeling becomes. In such
situation, it is difficult to enlarge the steam acting range to im-prove heavy oil recovery. In this paper, based on study on the steam soaking situation of Block 9 heavy oil reservoir, Kalamayi Oilfield, a newly developed high temperature GFD-98 gel com-binationhas been applied to several wells to control steam pro-file, which has made a hit.

Key words: heavy oil production, thermal recovery, steam soaking, profile control