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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
Abstract
(Begin page 781)
AAPG Bulletin, V.
The use of satellite-based radar interferometry to monitor production
activity at the Cold Lake heavy oil field, Alberta, Canada
R. P. W. (Stan) Stancliffe,1
Marco W. A. van der Kooij2
1Imperial Oil Resources, Research Center, 3535 Research Road
N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2L 2K8, Canada; email: [email protected]
2Atlantis Scientific Inc., 20 Colonnade Road, Suite 110, Nepean, Ontario, K2E
7N6, Canada; email: [email protected]
AUTHORS
Stan Stancliffe is a petroleum geoscientist with Imperial Oil Resources in Calgary. He received his geology B.Sc. degree at the University of Southampton in England and an M.Sc. degree in micropalaeontology and palynology from the University of Hull. His Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, involved the study of palynomorphs from the Upper Jurassic of Britain. Subsequent postdoctoral work took him to Nagasaki University to study Tertiary palynomorphs and to the Imperial Oil Research Center, Calgary, where he instigated palynofacies work on Lower Cretaceous sediments in northeastern Alberta. He has published articles on palynomorph morphology, evolution, classification, and biostratigraphy from around the globe. His present interests include remote sensing, production geology of bitumen oil fields, and the depositional environments of clastic sediments.
Marco van der Kooij is managing the Earth Observation Services
Division at Atlantis Scientific Inc. in Ottawa. He received his M.Sc. degree in aerospace
engineering from Delft University in the Netherlands in 1988. He has a research background
in radar remote sensing and was employed at TNO Physics and Electronics in the Netherlands
and as a research fellow at the Canada Center for Remote Sensing. His experience includes
the development of synthetic-aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) methodology and its
application in the generation of digital elevation models and accurate deformation maps.
He has published articles related to spaceborne and airborne remote sensing for land
and
ocean applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the management of the Imperial Oil Resources, Research Center, Calgary, and Atlantis Scientific Inc. for permission to publish this data. Assistance and numerous discussions concerning this article were provided by Russ Costello, Jon Dudley, Ron Goodman, Joan Lloyd, and Roy Shegelski at Imperial. Jim Ehrismann and Rob Hitchcock gave support with data processing and its interpretation at Atlantis Scientific. The external reviewers also provided invaluable suggestions to improve the clarity and range of the article: thank you all.
ABSTRACT
The Cold Lake heavy oil field has been studied by geoscientists for more than 30 years and has been producing bitumen for 20 years using the cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) process. Future development options can be improved by the resolution of steam movement and the avoidance of areas of faults and fractures. To locate these features, remote sensing has recently been investigated as a cheaper alternative to four-dimensional seismic surveys.
Advances in satellite and radar technology have made it possible to
measure very small movements of the earth's surface found in earthquake zones and volcanic
regions. The technique uses synthetic-aperture radar interferometry (InSAR), allowing the
measurement of deformation using a vertical resolution, in optimal conditions, on the
order of millimeters between repeat acquisitions. This accuracy has only been achieved
over dry areas without significant vegetation growth. At the Cold Lake oil field, it has
been reported previously that the injection of steam to mobilize the bitumen causes the
pump jacks to heave and subside by as much as 30 cm during the first steam cycle. The
present project was instigated to determine if such small positive and negative vertical
movements could be resolved over the field. Data from three satellite radar sensors were
selected: ERS (European remote sensing satellite), JERS (Japanese remote sensing
satellite) and Radarsat (the Canadian radar satellite). The present article has provided
the first results of repeat-pass InSAR using JERS SAR data for the land
subsidence
application area. Contrary to the widespread belief that this technology can only be used
for dry areas, we show that accurate results, on the order of a centimeter in resolution,
can be obtained in a forested area such as Cold Lake using the JERS L-band spaceborne SAR
system.
(Begin page 782)
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