Introduction to Unconventional Gas

Manika Prasad

…Recent years have brought a rapid expansion of activities around shale gas. The successes in shale gas exploitation have been mainly attributed to advances in engineering. In particular, hydraulic fracturing has contributed immensely towards this success. To date, geophysics has yet to assume a major role in the development of…

Assessing Knudsen flow in gas-flow models of shale reservoirs

Utpalendu Kuila, Manika Prasad and Hossein Kazemi

…Summary Shale reservoirs are characterized by extremely small pores and very low permeability. Detection and quantification of these small pores is a challenge. Furthermore, in such small pores, the gas flow need not flow in a Darcy flow regime. The Knudsen diffusion and slip flow gain significance and might account…

Characterization of sandstone reservoirs using Poisson impedance inversion

Ritesh K. Sharma and Satinder Chopra

…We demonstrate the application of Poisson impedance (PI) inversion for characterizing sandstone reservoirs encased in shale, when the impedance contrast between them is very small. Poisson Impedance is defined as the difference between the P-impedance (IP) and a scaled version of the S-impedance (IS), where the scalar (c) can be…

Conventional approach for characterizing unconventional reservoirs

Ritesh K. Sharma and Satinder Chopra

…Shale resources characterization has gained attention in the last decade or so, after the Mississippian Barnett shale was successfully developed with the application of hydraulic fracing and horizontal drilling. For characterization of shale gas formations different workflows using 3D surface seismic data have been introduced. We propose an integrated workflow…

Estimating the value of Geophysics: decision analysis

Lee Hunt

…Summary This paper discusses the value of geophysical data in the resource play paradigm. Specifically, it shows how well known decision analysis techniques can be applied to estimate the value of seismic for resource play examples. We examine the sensitivity to the accuracy of the seismic interpretation and to the…

Presidential Column

…A long winter / late spring extended the seismic season on the prairies, and caused much elevator chatter about the frequent April snow showers in Calgary. Record cold in parts of Ontario in early April were followed by floods in cottage country. It is unpredictable. By the time this issue…

Executive Message

…Larry Herd, your past past CSEG President, called me about a year ago to join the Finance team as Assistant Director, giving me the opportunity to serve with him on the CSEG Executive. I was pleased to see Ron Larson elected to the Vice Presidents role. I have known Ron…

CAGC Column

…Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was in many ways the poster child used for global warming by climate change environmental activists. In terms of overall hurricane activity (number and intensity of storms), the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active season ever recorded. However with the global economic downturn the…

CSEG Foundation Outreach

…Westmount School Presentation In February I made a presentation on geoscience to students of Christine Crane, a grade 7 teacher at the new Westmount School in Okotoks. Rachel Green, my great niece, had initiated it. The presentation was on behalf of the Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre and CSEG-F Outreach.…

Science Break: Cogeneration

…I get feedback on these Science Break articles, something I really enjoy. On the topic of war, encryption and crosswords, Jim Laing drew my attention to a WWII story involving a Surrey, England headmaster who was a regular crossword author. English intelligence noticed a suspiciously high number of their “secret”…

Tracing the Industry

…This month I want to tell you about a great restaurant and deli that we found, Francesco’s Food and Coffee. They make their own sandwiches, soups and daily specials on the premises. They also have one of the best and most reasonably priced cheese selections in town. I suggest you…

Grapevine

…Happy GeoConvention month! I have had the entertaining image of Larry Lines singing “When I’m 64” in front of an audience of 200 of his peers in my head for the past month. For those who were(n’t) at the awards luncheon at the Symposium, Larry burst into the Beatles song…

Elucidating Paleo Depositional Environments from 3D Seismic ‘Solving for One Part of the Hydrocarbon Accumulation Puzzle’

Trevor Johnson

…Seismic data has been utilized in oil and gas exploration since around 1928, with early efforts directed at revealing the gross structural and trap configuration in what was then the frontier areas. However, over the intervening time the technique has been continually refined and improved upon with modern 3D prestack…

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

…Summary 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)…

Synthetic seismograms, Synthetic Sonic Logs and Synthetic Core

Laurence R. Lines and Mahbub Alam

…Abstract 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…

Interpretation of Time-Lapse Seismic Data from a Heavy Oil Field, Alberta, Canada

Byron Matthew Kelly and Donald C. Lawton

…Abstract 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…

On the Characterization of Unconventional Oil Reservoirs

N.A. Solano, C.R. Clarkson, F.F. Krause, S.D. Aquino, and A. Wiseman

…Summary 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…

Predicting hydrocarbon production capacity in an unconventional reservoir from seismic derived elastic properties

Gorka Garcia Leiceaga, Mark Norton, Joël Le Calvez and Freia Henery

…Summary 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;…

Seismic modelling of unconventional reservoirs

Marco Perez

…Introduction 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…