ABSTRACT: A Radar Case Study--Dizzy Creek Field, Northern Alberta Basin

Jens F. Touborg

A remote sensing and structural study of the Dizzy Creek oil field in the mid-Devonian Black Creek salt basin was carried out using C-band airborne S.A.R. imagery together with regional LANDSAT and magnetic data to promote radar for exploration geology.

The Black Creek basin straddles the northeast-southwest-trending Hay River-McDonald fault, a Precambrian subprovince boundary and a major transcurrent structure. The radar test project was designed to map lineament expressions of (1) reactivated basement fault and (2) sedimentary facies patterns related to carbonate reef facies and evaporite sections under Devonian, Cretaceous shale, and Pleistocene till cover.

Canada Centre for Remote Sensing acquired C-band imagery with 6 m resolution from northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast swaths, 18 × 100 km in area over the Dizzy Creek oil field, which produces from Keg River reef facies at 1200 m depth.

We have correlated radar and TM LANDSAT imagery data with regional magnetic data and conclude that the radar imagery shows a phenomenal structural and textural resolution with important details about

1. Subsidiary ENE-WSW, northeast-southwest, and north-south fault systems along the Hay River dextral fault and northwest-southeast cross-faults
2. The Dizzy Creek field where producing wells are aligned on ENE-WSW fault trends
3. Potential dome-structural highs and salt basin structures reflected in fault-bounded circular curvilinears--8 to 15 km in diameter and arranged on northwest-southeast trends.

Directional radar imagery has an enormous potential in structural mapping from regional exploration to defining a prospect and as an aid in reservoir modelling.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90998 AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, London, Ontario, Canada, September 10-12, 1990