Integrated Monitoring of Steam Chamber Development Using Time-Lapse PP-PS Joint Inversion: A Case Study of Oil Sands Reservoir, Canada

Abstract

The M field is located in the Athabasca oil sands region of Alberta, Canada. The oil sands reservoir is about 200 meters in depth within the Lower Cretaceous Upper McMurray formation, which belongs to a marine shoreface deposit environment. Because the crude oil has the properties of high gravity, high density and high viscosity, the oil sand is of solidity and cannot be produced directly. SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) was the primary recovery method for this special reservoir and has been used for a while in this development region. But the production capacity of different horizontal well platforms varies greatly. So the key to improve the production is how to predict the change of developed chamber and developing chamber. Based on the petrophysical analysis, the changes of Vp/Vs in different periods can reflect the variation of temperature, pressure and saturation of the oil sand reservoir. So in this paper, a high-precision time-lapse rock physics model has been built to estimate Vp/Vs of different development periods. And the time-lapse PP-PS joint pre-stack inversion has been carried out based on the 4D3C (4 dimensional, 3 component) seismic data, including Base (2016) and Monitor (2018) multi-component seismic surveys. The developed chamber, predicted by Vp/Vs decreasing, high temperature and high gas saturation, indicates the past production by the time of the Monitor seismic acquisition. And the predicted result is consistent with the observation wells and cumulative oil production. The developing chamber predicted by Vp/Vs increasing, indicates the future production, which is important for optimizing production performance.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90350 © 2019 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, May 19-22, 2019