Cold Lake 3-D seismic data analysis

J. Helen Isaac, Donald C. Lawton

Two 3-D seismic surveys have been acquired by Imperial Oil Ltd. across part of a heavy oil field at Cold Lake, Alberta. The field is under production by means of cyclic steam stimulation of the reservoir. The surveys were acquired in 1990 and 1992 and it is hoped that the temporal change in reservoir conditions may be inferred from the seismic character and attribute differences between them. It is also anticipated that the tight steaks that act as permeability barriers may be detected on the seismic data.

The two surveys were reprocessed in order to keep the differences between them above the reservoir zone to a minimum and were also processed to retain true amplitude information for amplitude-versus-offset analysis. The processing procedure is discussed in this paper. The final, migrated 3-D data will be analysed on a workstation.