Steam-injection monitoring in South Oman—from single-pattern to field-scale surveillance

Abstract

Downhole seismic monitoring has become an alternative to more conventional surface seismic in cases where the latter has low signal-to-noise ratio or poor repeatability, or when frequent monitoring of a local target is required. Downhole 3D VSP monitoring has been applied to both onshore (O'Brien et al., 2004; Kiyashchenko et al., 2011) and offshore environments (Wu et al., 2011). In onshore environments, surface seismic repeatability often suffers from surface noise and near-surface variations caused by water-table changes or surface facilities construction. For VSP surveys, the wavefield separation into downgoing and upgoing fields presents an opportunity to discriminate between near-surface and reservoir changes, thus making time-lapse applications more effective.

Distributed acoustic sensing for reservoir monitoring with vertical seismic profiling

“…Preparations for such a full-field monitoring with DAS 3D VSP is underway for a steam injection project in Oman (Kiyashchenko et al, 2013).…”

Reservoir monitoring of steam‐assisted gravity drainage using borehole measurements

“…Recently, Kiyashchenko et al . () reported on plans for field‐scale surveillance based on 3D VSP data using multiple wells in a steam injection setting.…”

“…In contrast to conventional time-lapse 3D VSP data in one well (O'Brien et al 2004;Cheng, Huang and Rutledge 2009), a setting with more wells will maximize the imaged area between and around the wells. Recently, Kiyashchenko et al (2013) reported on plans for field-scale surveillance based on 3D VSP data using multiple wells in a steam injection setting. Figure 3 shows the well geometry for the presented study, and the location of the two vertical observation wells used to monitor the steam injection process in the displayed four injector/producer well pairs.…”