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They insisted that this was simply a classical scientific experiment. Looking back over these past twenty years, it still amazes me how careful and thorough Norm and Larry were in the execution of that project. Norm knew they would only get one chance to make the project work. However, they were also aware that the reservoir engineers had no exposure to seismic data and little confidence that it could possibly help. Amos showed results that indicated that the seismic velocity through a tar saturated sand decreased dramatically as the sample was heated, and while many of the people in the audience argued passionately that this was only a laboratory artifact, Norm and Larry were convinced this could be the key to mapping the movement of the injected steam. Norm and Larry were also aware of a controversial paper that Amos Nur of Stanford University had presented at a recent SPE meeting. Norm had heard something about the earlier Arco survey, and he knew that they were trying to monitor the progress of the fireflood production process. The earlier pilot did not turn out well, as the injected solvent never turned up at any of the production or observation wells, although it was noticed later that they actually raised the surface elevation by a few centimeters! On the basis of this bad experience Norm thought there must be a role for seismic to locate where the injected steam might be headed. This pilot (Gregoire Lake In-situ Steam Pilot or GLISP) was adjacent to another Amoco lease where they had tried to produce the bitumen by injecting hydrocarbon solvent. First, Amoco with their partners AOSTRA and PetroCanada, were planning a steam drive pilot in the tar sands near Gregoire Lake, just South of Fort McMurray. Norm had come up with the idea for this project from a number of interesting sources. They were planning a tiny and incredibly elaborate 3D seismic survey that would be repeated several times over the period of a few years (provided everything went as expected). Then I was really confused.Ī little over a year later, while working back in Calgary, I was called into a meeting with Norm Pullin and Larry Matthews who were working for Amoco. At the time I wondered why anyone would care about 1 ms of static difference, until it was explained that they had gone to great expense to bury the geophones under a permanent gravel pad with the expectation that they would avoid exactly this sort of problem. I was called in because I was working in the R&D group and was supposed to know something about statics. Arco had shot a small 3D survey and then re-shot the survey several months later and were very concerned that the event times on the two surveys did not precisely tie. My first exposure to Time Lapse seismic came in 1983 while I was working for GSI in Dallas. Since this subject is one of strong personal interest for me, I must caution you that I will take this opportunity to write a very subjective view of the history of the time lapse seismic monitoring technique and in the course of this, hopefully pass on some useful information. Last month, when I made this same trip it was to teach another course on the same subject. In fact, the reason I am making this trip is to help another company get started on the interpretation of their first time lapse seismic dataset.
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On the other hand, it would have been very difficult to refuse since there are few other things that have affected my career (perhaps my life) over the past twenty years the way this subject has. As I write this article, I am sitting on another airplane crossing the Atlantic, and I wonder why I promised Satinder that I would write an article about Time Lapse seismic monitoring for the RECORDER.