Kearl Oil Sands: Resource Characterization of a Giant Oil Sands Deposit

Michael J. Peacock
Imperial Oil, Calgary, AB

The Kearl Oil Sands deposit is located just north of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada. It contains in excess of 5 billion barrels of resource with a preliminary development plan to recover in excess of 4 billion barrels. The deposit straddles several leases, each 100% owned by ExxonMobil Canada and Imperial Oil respectively. Imperial Oil operates the opportunity. The development would be a truck and shovel operation similar to the current Syncrude mine.

The reservoir for the deposit, are the unconsolidated fluvial and estuarine sands of the Lower Cretaceous McMurray formation. These form complex reservoir channel systems with significant reservoir heterogeneity. Net pays range from 25 to 75 meters with excellent reservoir parameters. The bitumen has an 8 degree API and a viscosity of 1.7 million cp.

Fluvial-estuarine point bar reservoirs represent a large fraction of the resource that can be developed. Similar facies from the Syncrude mine can be organized into a hierarchy that subdivides channel-fills into bedsets, stories, bars and barsets. Inclined heterolithic stratafication (IHS) surfaces can be identified.

The Kearl resource description and resource assessment will be compared with standard or conventional assessment techniques

Significant resource delineation drilling has occurred prior to project approval, to reduce the reservoir uncertainty and improve resource definition. This allows for a unique opportunity to analyze a complex depositional system with abundant well and core control. Software techniques, to quickly interpret large datasets, have been successfully tested on an analogue dataset from the Syncrude mine. Laser imaging of the mine face, will also be useful for recording stratigraphy and determining the mined volume of ore.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90039©2005 AAPG Calgary, Alberta, June 16-19, 2005