3-D geologic modeling and its applications for the Clearwater formation Reservoir, Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada

Conference · Tue May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1990 · AAPG Bulletin (American Association of Petroleum Geologists); (USA)

OSTI ID:6667412

Leung, S K; Belanger, C E; Sheptycki, R J ^[1]

---

1. Esso Resources Canada Ltd., Calgary, Alberta (Canada)

Three-dimensional models were built to mimic the geology of the Clearwater Formation reservoir at Esso Resources Canada Limited Cold Lake production operations. Each model consists of 3.9 million cells, covers an area of 376 km{sup 2} (144 mi{sup 2}), and encompasses the Esso in-situ development area. The models, facies, bitumen saturation, and sand quality were built using stratigraphic surfaces (nonparallel surfaces) to guide the interwell data interpolation process. The Lower Cretaceous Clearwater Formation in the Cold Lake area contains 11.3 billion m{sup 3} in place (71 billion bbl) of bitumen requiring in-situ thermal stimulation processes for recovery. Within the development area, the facies are dominantly deltaic and include clean, rich, outer stream mouth bar; shaleprone inner stream mouth bar; and offshore transition sands. Sand quality affects resource distribution and reservoir performance. Erosional and downlap surfaces make the modeling process more complex than simple layer-cake, parallel surface modeling. The procedure for building the three-dimensional geologic model included (1) data gathering, (2) data editing, (3) data preparation, (4) geologic horizon gridding, (5) well modeling, (6) data interpolation, and (7) verification. Each of the models can be merged with the other. Various cutoffs with any combination of the three modeled reservoir parameters can be applied in information retrieval. These merge and search capabilities are very useful for sensitivity studies, resources distribution calculation, reservoir quality displays, production problem solving, and various statistical analyses. Moreover, the three-dimensional models can be input directly into the Exxon reservoir engineering simulator.

• OSTI ID: 6667412
• Report Number(s): CONF-900605--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: AAPG Bulletin (American Association of Petroleum Geologists); (USA) Journal Volume: 74:5
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020200* -- Petroleum-- Reserves
Geology
& Exploration
58 GEOSCIENCES
580000 -- Geosciences
ALBERTA
ALLUVIAL DEPOSITS
CANADA
CRETACEOUS PERIOD
GEOLOGIC AGES
GEOLOGIC DEPOSITS
GEOLOGIC FORMATIONS
GEOLOGIC MODELS
MESOZOIC ERA
MINERAL RESOURCES
NORTH AMERICA
PETROLEUM DEPOSITS
RESERVOIR ROCK
RESOURCES
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS