Articles
Unconventional Petroleum Resources and “Hubbert’s Peak”
Laurence R. Lines
Long-term predictions of world petroleum supply are generally risky at best. Such predictions are often in error since they do not account for new discoveries, volatile political climates, and the wide variation in oil prices over time.
There is one prediction that (until recently) was considered to be an accurate…
PP time delay and PS splitting anomalies in the reservoir of an active THAI® project
Kurtis Wikel and Rob Kendall
Heavy oil recoveries in most heavy oil reservoirs in Western Canada are usually less than 10% under primary recovery schemes (native pressure and oil saturation). Thermal methods have been utilized in the Saskatchewan heavy oil region by many operators as a profitable alternative to traditional enhanced oil recovery (EOR) schemes.…
Synthetic seismograms, Synthetic Sonic Logs and Synthetic Core
Laurence R. Lines and Mahbub Alam
In geophysics, we often model or “synthesize” measurements in order to enhance our interpretation of geophysical data. Synthetic seismograms often utilize sonic and density logs to produce impedance profiles in order to model seismograms in order for us to pick reflections on seismic data. Synthetic sonic logs, as initially described…
Interpretation of Time-Lapse Seismic Data from a Heavy Oil Field, Alberta, Canada
Byron Matthew Kelly and Donald C. Lawton
Two 3-D seismic datasets and their difference volume were interpreted and analyzed for the presence of amplitude anomalies and time delays related to the injection of steam into a shallow, heavy oil reservoir. High amplitude anomalies were observed on the monitor data in conjunction with apparent time-thickening of the reservoir…
On the Characterization of Unconventional Oil Reservoirs
N.A. Solano, C.R. Clarkson, F.F. Krause, S.D. Aquino, and A. Wiseman
Oil production from low-permeability strata in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is continuously increasing, rivaling the production potential from conventional targets in the same areas. This increase in productivity is related to important advances in drilling and completion technology that are driven, in particular, by improvements in multi-fractured horizontal…
Predicting hydrocarbon production capacity in an unconventional reservoir from seismic derived elastic properties
Gorka Garcia Leiceaga, Mark Norton, Joël Le Calvez and Freia Henery
Seismic-derived elastic properties may be used to help evaluate hydrocarbon production capacity in unconventional plays such as tight or shale gas. By combining prestack seismic and well log data, inversion-based volumes of elastic properties may be produced. Moreover, a petrophysical evaluation and rock physics analysis may be carried out; thus,…
Seismic modelling of unconventional reservoirs
Marco Perez
Unconventional resource development has become an exercise in determining where horizontal wells should be placed to maximize hydro-fracture efficiency. A large part of optimizing how the resource is developed requires understanding the reservoir from both lithologic and rock properties perspectives and correlating these with production data to infer frac efficiency.…
How to maximize recoverable reserves in an unconventional reservoir using reservoir characterization from 3D seismic: a Barnett Shale Case Study
Roxana Varga, Ted Holden and John Pendrel
Producing commercial quantities of petroleum and natural gas from organic rich shales was uncommon a decade ago. Due to improved technologies and strengthening in the price of petroleum, activity in unconventional shale projects has increased significantly, particularly as more and more oil reservoirs have been identified. Maximizing recoverable reserves is…
Recent developments in microseismic monitoring: Introduction to the focus issue on Microseismic
David Eaton and Mirko van der Baan
Increasingly widespread use of passive methods to monitor hydraulic fracture treatment programs is driving technological advances that are changing how microseismic data are acquired, processed and interpreted. This focus issue of the Recorder contains a series of 4 articles that deal with a variety of research topics varying from acquisition…
Optimization of a Shallow Microseismic Array Design for Hydraulic Fracture Monitoring – A Horn River Basin Case Study
Paige Snelling and Neil Taylor
Many considerations go into the design of a surface or nearsurface array for microseismic monitoring. These include aspects of the array itself such as the number of stations, the station depth and density, array aperture, shallow geology as well as the geology of the target formation and completions design. Other…
Microseismic Event Locations using the Double-Difference Algorithm
Fernando Castellanos and Mirko van der Baan
In this work we describe a reprocessing technique to relocate microseismic events based on the double-difference method. First, we use a crosscorrelation technique to assess waveform similarity between events and identify multiplet groups. Then, we correct relative arrival time inconsistencies between doublets. Next we apply the double-difference algorithm, which is…
Reservoir heterogeneity and ‘stealth’ zones in microseismic: Role of rock fabric
Per Kent Pedersen and David W. Eaton
For a single stage of a hydraulic-fracture treatment, microseismic monitoring surveys often reveal event clouds that contain intervening regions where microseisms appear to be sparse or absent (“stealth zones”). Scaling relations from earthquakes suggest that typical microseismic moment magnitudes, in the range of -3 < Mw < -1, occur on…
Broadband microseismic observations from a Montney hydraulic fracture treatment, northeastern B.C., Canada
David Eaton, Mirko van der Baan, Jean-Baptiste Tary, Brad Birkelo, Neil Spriggs, Sarah Cutten and Kimberly Pike
A research project was undertaken in August 2011 for continuous passive monitoring of a multistage hydraulic fracture stimulation of a Montney gas reservoir near Dawson Creek, B.C., with the main objective of investigating low-frequency characteristics of microseismic events. This work was motivated by a recently discovered class of long-period longduration…
Chief Geophysicists’ Forum Microseismic sub-committee – Microseismic Survey
Chris Szelewski and Heath Pelletier
The Microseismic (MS) sub-committee of the Chief Geophysicists’ Forum (CGF) was formed in June, 2011 in response to the growing industry interest in, and use of MS and the recognition that there was an urgent need for standardization in MS data collection, documentation and deliverables.
In order to better understand…
Guidelines for Standard Deliverables
Shawn Maxwell and Florence Reynolds
The following guidelines were created through the Microseismic sub-committee of the CSEG Chief Geophysicists Forum (CGF) and have been endorsed by both the CGF and CSEG. The intention is to define the components of a microseismic project, but purposely avoid the issue of data formats. Separate initiatives are currently attempting…
Simultaneous time-lapse processing for improved repeatability
Jeff Grossman
In conjunction with amplitude-friendly simultaneous processing of time-lapse seismic data, we introduce a QC scheme that steers the processing towards optimal time-lapse repeatability. We compute NRMS errors between stacked traces for different vintages of a survey after each main step of simultaneous processing. A processing step (which may include intermediate…
Introduction to this special section: Reservoir Characterization
Satinder Chopra
We have now reached the stage where reservoir characterization has come to be known as a discipline of its own. Some universities have started offering a master’s degree program on reservoir characterization so that the required knowledge and skill sets can be imparted directly to the students. We have already…
Dynamic reservoir characterization of the Lower Cretaceous Paluxy Formation, Delhi Field, Louisiana
Holly Robinson and Tom Davis
Delhi Field is a producing oil field located in the Madison, Franklin and Richland parishes of northeastern Louisiana (Figure 1). The field is 15 miles long and 2 to 2.5 miles wide, with an aerial extent of 6,200 acres. Delhi Field was discovered in 1944 and is estimated to contain…
Characterization of a heavy oil reservoir combining multiattribute analysis and spectral decomposition for density prediction, Maturín Sub-basin, Venezuela
Fabiola Ruiz and Milagrosa Aldana
The main objective of this work is to characterize a heavy oil reservoir located at the southern flank of the Maturín Sub- Basin. A rock physics analysis showed that the acoustic impedances of sandstones and shales are very similar within the reservoir, but density is a good lithological indicator. Hence,…
Seismic Lithology Prediction: A Montney Shale Gas Case Study
John Nieto, Bogdan Batlai, and Franck Delbecq
In any oil or natural gas development – conventional or unconventional – it is important to understand lithology, as it is a fundamental building block for all reservoir characterization work. Field development is enhanced by the ability to spatially predict different rock-types which in turn have different properties such as…
