G54A-07:
InSAR Observations and Modeling of Anthropogenic Surface Deformation in the Alberta Oil Sands
Friday, 19 December 2014: 5:30 PM
Jillian Pearse1, Vern Singhroy2, Sergey V Samsonov3 and Junhua Li2, (1)Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, (2)Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada, (3)Natural Resources Canada, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Abstract:
Recent Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations over northern Alberta,
Canada show persistent surface uplift occurring at rates of 1-4 cm/year, localized at several
sites where the Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technique is currently being used
to extract bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands. We find that uplift rates above the
horizontal injector wells are strongly correlated with rates of steam injection, even though
there is a net fluid loss from the reservoir pore space as oil and water are withdrawn
through the production wells. In combination with available steam injection and bitumen
production data at four sites, we use numerical reservoir flow models to explain how the thermal and
geomechanical effects of steam injection on an oil sand reservoir can generate uplift at the
surface. Results of our numerical experiments show that persistent surface heave consistent
with observed rates can be driven by stress changes in the reservoir due to porous flow and
thermal expansion.
