Steam Assisted Gas-Oil Gravity Drainage (SAGOGD) trial is planned for a limited area of a giant producing light oil field in Oman. Oil production from this oil-wet fractured carbonate reservoir commenced in 1967, and recovery factor currently stands at approximately 20%. The SAGOGD process in a light oil fractured reservoir is complex and is comprised of numerous recovery mechanisms, with a number of these being uncertain and poorly understood. Very little world analogue data is available [1], and that, combined with large recovery process uncertainties make this ‘large pilot scale’ Phase 1 essential to mitigate the downside risk in a full-field development. During Phase-1 it is planned to inject 2000t/d of steam by means of 4 vertical steam injectors. Oil, gas and condensed steam will be produced by 7 horizontal producers and 5 vertical back-up producers. The magnitude of the SAGOGD production response is highly uncertain. Having the capability to accurately measure the incremental oil production response over this wide uncertainty range was considered to be a key success factor for the Phase 1 project. To accurately measure the incremental response required that a ‘no steam’ production response could be confidently projected into the future for a minimum of two, and up to five years. This task was made considerably more complex by the fact that historical GOGD well production profiles were often relatively unstable. This paper describes the work carried out within PDO to ensure that one of the key Phase 1 success criteria – that being to measure the incremental oil due to SAGOGD – can be achieved over a primary evaluation period of two to five years. The discussion will include a description of efforts linked to optimization of cold GOGD performance (optimum oil rim management), well production stabilization (via installation of new production control hardware) and accurate measurement of total and individual well production levels (dedicated bulk and well-test facilities), and how this all came together to yield a stable cold production baseline which could be confidently projected into the future.