Nearly all of Husky's SAGD projects in the Lloydminster, Saskatchewan area are in reservoirs with bottomwater. While operating several projects in this region, Husky observed that in some reservoir settings the outer SAGD pair had significantly decreased performance compared to inner SAGD pairs. When the outer pair was shut in to improve overall pilot performance, the performance of the now exposed adjacent pair rapidly decreased. It was hypothesized that operating the edge pairs protected inner pairs from the detrimental effects of bottomwater. Numerical simulation runs have confirmed this behaviour. The conclusions reached are that in many bottomwater settings poorer-performing edge SAGD pairs protect and preserve the performance of inner SAGD pairs; and this should be taken into consideration during facilities' design, development of operational strategy, and production forecasting.