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The next wave in reservoir monitoring

The instrumented oil field

4th Wave Imaging Corporation, Laguna Beach, Cafifornia, U.S.

Corresponding author: david.lumley@4thwaveimaging.com

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

The next wave in reservoir monitoring will be the "instrumented oil field." The defining concept is twofold. First, arrays of seismic and other geophysical sensors will be permanently deployed at or near the surface, and in boreholes, associated with a producing hydrocarbon reservoir. These permanent arrays will provide on-demand imaging capability of large-scale reservoir fluid flow. Second, injecting and producing wells will be instrumented with downhole sensors such as pressure, temperature, and saturation gauges to monitor small-scale fluid flow local to the wells. The data from these sensor arrays, coupled with advances in borehole completion technology, will allow fluid injection and production at wells to be optimally controlled from the surface. The combination of these geophysical and engineering technologies, encompassing both 4-D seismic and smart wells, will provide near real-time images of reservoir fluid flow and, importantly, the capability to take timely action upon those images in order to optimize hydrocarbon production. The instrumented oil field does not exist today, but given the rapid advances we are experiencing in seismic monitoring and engineering production technology, coupled with field pilot studies already under way, it is likely that it will become a reality in the next 5–10 years.

	Reservoir monitoring today

 
At present, our industry has developed the technology to successfully monitor production of hydrocarbon reservoirs in many scenarios. Published examples show that we can successfully monitor thermal systems such as steam injection and in-situ combustion, gas injection and gas contact movement, and oil-water systems including primary depletion, natural water drive, and water injection. In almost all cases, current technology requires that the reservoir rocks be soft (e.g., unconsolidated sands), and one of the monitored fluids to be highly compressible (e.g., gas or high-GOR oil) compared to other fluids present in the reservoir.

The first field tests of seismic monitoring occurred in the late . . . [Full Text of this Article]