Steam Chamber Description Using Seismic and Production Data

Abstract A heavy oil field is developed with the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). Since the start of oil production, the oil production amount of the studied reservoir has been lower than that of the surrounding oil fields. The development of the steam chambers are relatively poor, and the spatial distribution of the steam chambers is not clear. In order to describe the shape of the steam chambers accurately, a novel method of monitoring the steam chambers is proposed by using broadband, high-density seismic data and dynamic production data. Broadband, high-density seismic data are acquired. Firstly, seismic horizons are well interpreted, and multiple seismic attributes are analyzed in combination with well data to understand the seismic response of the steam chambers. Then, several seismic inversion methods are tried to obtain high-resolution impedance, and they are compared with each other to find optimal inversion result for steam chamber prediction. Finally, the shape of the steam chambers are delineated with seismic attributes, inverted impedance, production data, and temperature logs of observation wells. The predicted steam chamber has good agreement with the temperature logs of observation wells. The result shows that the appearance of steam chambers has an obvious impact on seismic signals, and broadband, high-density seismic data make great contributions to the description of the steam chambers. The proposed method reduces the uncertainty in steam chamber prediction with single data source, and is applicable to other oilfields using steam injection.