Articles
Methods to Calibrate Low-Amplitude Surface Monitoring Microseismic Results via Integration of Geology, Production Data, and Reservoir Simulation
Sherilyn Williams-Stroud, Chet Ozgen and Randal L. Billingsley
An array of geophones on the surface above the reservoir was used to map hydraulic fractures by locating microseismic events in order to estimate the effectiveness of the stimulation. In general, hydraulic fracture orientations can be inferred from the geometry of the events when microseismicity forms linear or planar trends…
Do Hydraulic Fractures Induce Events Large Enough to be Felt on Surface?
Adam M. Baig, Ted Urbancic, and Gisela Viegas
Hydraulic fracturing is known to generate seismic events, with magnitudes that typically range up to magnitude M0. The presence of these events has been widely exploited and interpreted in terms of fracture geometries and efficiency of stimulations. However, the reported magnitude ranges are dependent on the instrumentation used to capture…
Cardium Microseismic West Central Alberta: A Case History
John L. J. Duhault
In 2010, Petrobakken Energy acquired several companies with resource play potential in the Cardium formation in West Central Alberta. After the first year of encouraging results the company set out to further evaluate these properties in 2011 and drilled an additional 120 wells into the Cardium. Multistage hydraulic fracture stimulations…
An introduction to this special section: Seismic acquisition
R. Malcolm Lansley
This section on seismic acquisition is based on the papers that were presented under the Data Acquisition Session at the CSEG GeoConvention 2012: Vision in May, 2012. Of the five papers that were presented, the authors of three agreed to publish their material in a more complete format in The…
The Hussar low-frequency experiment
G.F. Margrave, L. Mewhort, T. Phillips, M. Hall, M.B. Bertram, D.C. Lawton, K. Innanen, K.W. Hall, K.Bertram
In early September of 2011, CREWES (Consortium for Research in Elastic-Wave Exploration Seismology) collaborated with Husky Energy, Geokinetics, and INOVA, to conduct a seismic experiment designed to study the initiation and recording of very low frequency seismic reflections. The motivation was to collect a dataset that will be useful to…
BroadSeis: Enhancing interpretation and inversion with broadband marine seismic
R. Soubaras, R. Dowle, and R. Sablon
BroadSeis™ variable-depth streamer acquisition is a CGGVeritas solution for broadband marine seismic which uses a proprietary cable shape and a novel deghosting technique to remove the receiver ghost and extends the usable primary bandwidth up to six octaves. This solution benefits from towing streamers at depths of up to 50…
The Benefits of Receiver Infill Stations: A Technical Case Study
Keith Millis and Andrea Crook
Seismic acquisition is frequently being conducted in areas with extensive infrastructure as well as numerous environmental restrictions. Although some restrictions to seismic acquisition affect both sources and receivers, receivers are generally unencumbered due to their relatively small environmental footprint and ease of deployment. Accordingly, receiver infill stations can be used…
Identifying Fault Activation in Shale Reservoirs Using Microseismic Monitoring during Hydraulic Stimulation: Source Mechanisms, b Values, and Energy Release Rates
Michael Kratz, Arifandy Aulia, and Andrew Hill
Microseismic monitoring is an important tool for developing unconventional resources such as shale gas and understanding the geomechanical properties of the reservoir. Identification of fault planes that intersect horizontal wellbores is critical for optimizing formation stimulation and avoiding the establishment of fluid flow pathways into nontarget formations, such as aquifers.…
Fourier Domain Regularization 5D and More
Valentina Khatchatrian
Global multi dimensional regularization has become a widely used tool in seismic data processing. Many advantages of regularization in the Fourier domain come with some serious problems. In this paper we consider the intrinsic properties of the Fourier transform to identify problems and limitations of the method. A practical and…
Non-hyperbolic MultiFocusing Improves Depth Imaging
Alex Berkovitch, Kostya Deev, Marianne Rauch-Davies, and Evgeny Landa
MultiFocusing technology can dramatically improve the quality of seismic imaging especially in cases of low fold data, poor signal- to- noise ratio and sparse 3D acquisition. At the same time, local parameters of the observed wavefield in prestack seismic records are of great interest for many seismic applications such as…
4D Study of Secondary Recovery Utilizing THAI from a Saskatchewan Heavy Oil Reservoir
Kurt 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.…
Processing 3-C Heavy Oil Data for Shallow Shear-wave Splitting Properties: Methods and Case Study
Richard Bale, Tobin Marchand, Keith Wilkinson, Kurtis Wikel, Robert Kendall
We demonstrate several aspects of processing 3-C data to obtain anisotropy information from shear-wave splitting. This includes: analysis for unknown or uncertain field orientations of the receivers; a new method of splitting analysis which uses both radial and transverse component data to estimate the S1 direction, which is compared with…
Integrated Time-lapse Monitoring of a Morrow Reservoir using Multicomponent Seismic and Flow Simulation, Postle Field, Oklahoma
Nataly A. Zerpa and Thomas L. Davis
The Upper Morrow sandstones in the western Anadarko Basin have been prolific oil producers for more than five decades. Detection of Morrow sandstones is a major problem in the exploration of new fields and the characterization of existing fields because: (1) they are often very thin, (2) they are laterally…
A Brief History of Depth… and Time Seismic Imaging
Samuel Gray
From the 1920s to the present, seismic imaging ("migration") has helped the oil and gas industry locate hydrocarbon traps inside the Earth. Migration has evolved and improved over the years, and it is now used routinely for structural imaging, seismic velocity estimation, and amplitude analysis, among other applications.
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GeoConvention 2012 Luncheon Speakers
Overview of the GeoConvention 2012 luncheon guest speakers, Dr. Michael Byers and L. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (Ret.).
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Geostatistical inversion of reflection data from thin bed coals
Jason M. McCrank, Don C. Lawton, and Cheran Mangat
A 3D seismic data set was acquired near Alder Flats, Alberta, to image several coal zones of the Ardley Coals. Deterministic inversion of the data shows a band-limited acoustic impedance result that over estimates the very low impedance of the coals as well as overestimating the thickness of the coal…
Reservoir vs. Seal Pressure Gradients: Perception and Pitfalls – Based on Case Histories from the Gulf of Mexico
Selim S. Shaker
There is confusion about the calculation of pore pressure gradient in permeable beds (reservoirs) versus very low permeable beds (seals) especially in the geopressured section. The four subsurface geopressure zones, introduced in this paper, explain the fundamentals of pressure measurements and predictions of reservoirs vs. seals. Reservoir and seal pressure…
The inaugural CSEG Symposium 2012
John Fernando
The seeds of the CSEG symposium were sown with Satinder Chopra’s presentation to the CSEG executive in October 2011. Being a person who leaves “no stone unturned” in his quest to make his efforts succeed, the presentation to the CSEG executive encompassed all the possible concerns the executive may pose…
Seismic attribute expression of differential compaction
Satinder Chopra and Kurt J. Marfurt
In a marine environment, topographic features on the sea floor will usually be covered by a thick layer of shale with the rise of sea level, resulting in a uniform, nearly flat surface. Evaporating seas may bury sea floor topography with a thick layer of salt. In a fluvial-deltaic environment,…
Microseismic Imaging of Hydraulic Fractures: Snap, Crackle and Pops of Shale Reservoirs
Shawn Maxwell
One of the key factors in economic development of shale and other unconventional reservoirs is effective hydraulic fracturing. Much of the current understanding of hydraulic stimulation of shales can be traced back to the Barnett Shale, where well engineering eventually led to a successful combination of massive water fracs, horizontal…
