Seismic monitoring of steamfloods in heavy oil reservoirs: A review

John Jianlin Zhang, Laurence R. Bentley

Steamfloods are used to improve heavy oil recovery. There are a variety of methods that can be used to detect thermal fronts and fluid movements. These methods include surface seismic, cross-well seismic tomography, cross-well electromagnetic tomography and passive seismic monitoring. The most commonly used seismic attributes are velocity, time delay, and reflection amplitude. AVO analysis and statistical methods such as discriminant analysis are improving the resolution and accuracy of seismic monitoring. Case studies from Indonesia and North America demonstrate the resolution of seismic monitoring and the relationship to reservoir changes due to steam injection.