One seismic source and receiver couple to detect steam effects on legacy data in Surmont, Canada.

Summary 4D seismic surveys have been completed every 6 months over the years to monitor the development of the steam chamber at Surmont, a heavy oil field located in northeast Alberta, Canada. Using only one source and one receiver optimally placed in the field, a novel light seismic monitoring has been “blind-tested” on non-migrated data from 2010 and 2015 for 3 spot locations chosen on the pad by ConocoPhillips. The objective was to see if the steam had reached one zone and not another by plotting the evolution of time-shift in these spots without knowing previous history. The time-shift changes obtained after processing were successfully fact-checked with temperature data from observation wells, confirming the qualitative variations attributed to the effects of the steam chamber evolution in 2 spots out of 3. This demonstrated the viability of this focused seismic approach to monitor the evolution of the steam chamber in Surmont. This also paves the way for other applications including offshore reservoir monitoring, inspired from this light and agile seismic acquisition system.