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Heavy-oil reservoir characterization using elastic wave properties

University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Corresponding author: lines@geo.ucalgary.ca

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

This case history describes seismic monitoring efforts at Pikes Peak Field, a prolific heavy-oil field (production exceeding 42 million barrels) just east of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border that has been operated by Husky Energy since 1981.

The Lower Cretaceous Waseca Formation, about 450 m below surface, is the producing reservoir. At Pikes Peak, the Waseca is an incised valley filled with estuarine deposits of a basal homogeneous sand unit, an interbedded sand and shale unit, and a capping shale unit (Van Hulten, 1984). The main producing zone, the homogeneous unit, had a net pay range of 5–30 m. Dissolution of deep Devonian salt units around the flanks of the field set up the combination structural and stratigraphic trap. The oil is 12° API and approximately 25 000 centipoise dead oil viscosity.

Steam drive technology has been used to enhance recovery. This technique injects steam at high temperature and pressure to reduce the effective viscosity of the oil.

In this study, we examine four techniques for seismic detection of the resulting steam fronts:

1. Differencing reflectivity functions for the monitor and base surveys.
   
2. Differencing acoustic impedance estimates for the monitor and base surveys.
   
3. Comparing interval P-wave traveltimes for the monitor and base surveys.
   
4. Estimating V_P/V_S variation from multicomponent data.
   

	Data

 
Seismic, well log, and production data were provided by Husky Energy. Figure 1 shows a map of the field and 29 north-south seismic lines (100 m apart) that Husky acquired in a 2D seismic swath survey in 1991. To investigate time-lapse effects, the University of Calgary AOSTRA (Alberta Oil Sands Technology Research Authority) group and Husky returned to the field in March 2000 to acquire a repeat line on the eastern side of the field. Four types of data were collected: P-wave (vertical and array), SV-wave, SH-wave, and experimental surface microphone data. . . . [Full Text of this Article]