Articles

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.

GeoConvention 2012 Luncheon Speakers

Overview of the GeoConvention 2012 luncheon guest speakers, Dr. Michael Byers and L. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (Ret.).

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…

On the extraction of angle dependent wavelets from synthetic shear wave sonic logs

David Cho, Craig Coulombe and Gary F. Margrave

The extraction of angle dependent wavelets requires the use of a shear wave sonic log. However, shear wave measurements are often not acquired in a conventional logging suite and must be estimated to produce a synthetic result. The errors associated with the synthetic shear propagate through to the angle dependent…

McKay Oil Sands 2D Seismic Inversion Case Study

Laurie M. Weston Bellman, Amanda Knowles, and Rozalia Pak

Southern Pacific Resource Corp (STP) acquired 211 km of 2D seismic data in September 2007 and an additional 5.1 km2 of 3D in December 2010. The 2D survey was used as an exploration tool which ultimately led to the McKay Thermal Project. Conventional seismic interpretation has been valuable in defining…

Distributed Acoustic Sensing for Geophysical Measurement, Monitoring and Verification

Barbara Cox

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is a rapidly maturing fiber-optic technology with numerous applications in geophysical and in-well monitoring, and is being developed in a partnership between Shell and Optasense. DAS transforms nearly any fiber-optic cable into a distributed array of acoustic sensors. Recording data requires a special “Interrogator Unit”, which…

Seismically Driven Characterization of Unconventional Shale Plays

Ahmed Ouenes

Unconventional shale plays are changing the energy sector in many ways. At the macro-economic level, shale plays are becoming a geopolitical game-changer with profound consequences for communities, energy companies, local and regional economies, and our planet. At the financial level, billions of dollars are invested each year in acquiring and…

Do you know what you think you know?

Matt Hall

Long-time US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously said that there are known knowns, and there are known unknowns. And of course there are unknown unknowns: “things we do not know we don’t know” (Rumsfeld, 2002). Perhaps there are unknown knowns too, though I’m not sure how you’d know.

Geophysical Constraints in Geostatistical Modelling

David I. Close

This case study, focused on a Cretaceous aged Mannville Group pool under water flood, illustrates the benefits of utilizing a quantitative and deterministic geomodelling workflow for reservoir characterization. Geophysical, geological and petrophysical data are integrated into a deterministic static model for simulation. The results of the simulation, in conjunction with…

Quantitative Interpretation Part II: Case studies

Lee Hunt, Scott Reynolds, Scott Hadley and Jon Downton

Quantitative interpretation is the numeric estimate of the earth property of interest from geophysical data. We believe that quantitative methods are crucial to our ability to add value in the oil and gas industry. We also believe that the cultural shift necessary to fully employ quantitative methods has already begun.…

Quantitative Interpretation Part I: Method

Lee Hunt

Recent advances in drilling and completions technology, economics, and in our business model have been profound, and are overwhelmingly concerned with a quantitative description of material properties, stress, and azimuthal properties of our reservoir and its bounding materials. Surface seismic data can provide estimates of many of these variables, but…

The future of geophysics in Canada’s oil and gas industry

The role of geophysics within the Calgary-based oil and gas industry is currently in a state of transition. Declining conventional reserves and the emergence of resource plays have created a different set of geotechnical challenges, and the discipline of geophysics within this newly emerging business environment is redefining itself. The…

Rock Physics Facilities and Research in the Experimental Geophysics Group at the University of Alberta

Douglas R. Schmitt

The Experimental Geophysics Group (EGG) carries out a wide variety of field and laboratory studies. These studies focus on understanding what controls the physical properties of rocks and how these relate to geophysical surface observations. Here, we hope to give some overview of the laboratory facilities that EGG has developed…