IPA11-G-194

PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION Thirty-Fifth Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2011 4D SEISMIC RESERVOIR CHARACTERIZATION OF A CO2 FLOOD A NEW TECHNOLOGY
Sony R. Mohammad* Thomas L. Davis*

ABSTRACT Seismic time-lapse is a proven tool to monitor changes due to production and injection in reservoirs. Today, there are approximately 120 enhanced oil recovery projects worldwide that involve CO2 injection. However, only two of these projects are currently being monitored. One of them is in the Postle Field in Texas County, Oklahoma, which is being led by the Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) of the Colorado School of Mines. We have used P-wave seismic data to dynamically characterize the reservoir at Postle Field. RCP shot a 6.25 square miles 4D, 9C seismic survey in March 2008 and repeated another survey in December 2009 after 19 BCF of CO2 had been injected into the reservoir from 18 wells. In addition, an 8-square mile P-wave vintage survey was shot for Mobil Oil Corporation (herein called the Mobil survey) in 1995 during the dormant stage of the field. Fluid saturation and reservoir pressure changed between 1995 and December 2008. Cross equalization was performed to increase the repeatability of seismic volumes by eliminating non-repeatable noise in the data. This process corrects phase, time-shift, frequency, and amplitude mismatch between the data, which might occur due to different acquisition parameters, soil condition during the survey, and processing workflows. As a result, the Normalized Root Mean Square (NRMS) difference of the Mobil and the RCP baseline has been improved from an average of 1.4 to 0.4. For the pair of the RCP surveys, the NRMS value has been lowered from an average of 0.3 to 0.15. Quadrature attribute and seismic inversion-ofdifference provide qualitative and quantitative timelapse interpretation. A maximum P-impedance change of -7% was obtained from the inversion process, which is consistent with the fluid substitution model. The anomalies confirm the existence of faults in the area as pathways for fluid
* Colorado School of Mines

flow in the reservoir. Moreover, the anomalies show high permeability trends associated with three main fairways of sandstone deposition in the field. 4D seismic has identified the main reservoir heterogeneities in the RCP study area. Well pattern performance confirms the existence of these heterogeneities. Dynamic reservoir characterization will assist future reservoir management efforts at Postle Field and is a technology that will likely grow in use for other CO2 floods worldwide. INTRODUCTION This paper is part of Phase XII of the Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) at the Colorado School of Mines. The main objective of Phase XII is to dynamically characterize the reservoir at Postle Field using 4D 9-C seismic data. Several other studies have been done to meet this objective including: reservoir facies determination (Jobe, 2009), P-wave seismic interpretation (Wiley, 2009), and permeability modeling (Lopez, 2010). This paper focuses on the application of 4D P-wave seismic data to meet the program objective of dynamically characterizing the reservoir in the Hovey Morrow Unit (HMU) at Postle Field. Postle Field is located in Texas County in the panhandle of Oklahoma (Figure 1). It is situated in the northwest part of the Anadarko Basin and produces from the Early Pennsylvanian Morrow Formation (Figure 2). Specifically, production comes from the Morrow A sandstone, which is interpreted as an incised valley-fill deposit (Jobe, 2009). Primary production from this unit began in 1962, and secondary recovery started in 1974. This area is currently undergoing a water-alternating-gas (WAG) flood involving carbon dioxide injection that started in 2007. To date, more than 9.7 MMbbl of oil and 10.1 BCF of gas have been produced from the HMU. The estimated OOIP ranges from 27 MMbbl to 45 MMbbl. Detailed production and injection data for

the RCP study area are shown in Figure 3. There are 70 wells inside the area including producers, injectors, and several dry holes. RCP acquired 6.25 square miles of 4D 9-C seismic data in March 2008 and in December 2008. The March survey was shot several months after injection program started, but only a small amount of CO2 had been injected. By December 2008, the amount of CO2 injection increased to 19 BCF. In addition, a vintage 8 square mile survey was shot by Mobil in 1995, which overlaps the southern part of the RCP study area. This paper illustrates the application of P-wave seismic time-lapse (4D) that is used as the main surveillance tool to monitor reservoir changes due to production and/or injection through time. The integration of time-lapse results and reservoir simulation can be used as a guide to optimize field production and development. METHODS There are four main steps in this study including: (1) conduct a 4D feasibility study using a rock and fluid physics approach to predict what to look for on the time-lapse data, (2) run cross equalization of 4D seismic data to eliminate non-repeatable noise that occurs in the seismic data, (3) run seismic attribute and seismic inversion analysis to enhance the visualization of the time-lapse anomalies, and (4) interpret the time-lapse results in combination with engineering and geologic data sets to characterize the reservoir. ROCK PHYSICS One of parameters that affect the success of a 4D project is detactability. It is related to the magnitude of the seismic difference due to both pressure and fluid saturation changes in the reservoir. This aspect depends on rock properties, fluid properties, and the reservoir injection and depletion process. Rock property information was obtained from cores and well log data. HMU 24-4 log data were used to derive average porosity and average density for the Morrow A sandstone interval. Six samples were measured in the laboratory to obtain dry compressional and dry shear velocites by Wandler (2009). These two properties are needed to calculate dry bulk and dry shear modulus as input to the Gassmann equation. QEMSCAN analysis showed abundant quartz content (70%) in the reservoir rock (Jobe, 2009), and therefore, the quartz bulk modulus

and density (Mavko et al., 2009) were used in the calculation. Fluid properties for oil, CO2, and brine were calculated using FLAG fluid calculator, which was developed by the Center for Rock Abuse of the Colorado School of Mines, and the Rock Physics Laboratory of the University Houston, given the reservoir conditions before and after the WAG injection program. Laboratory measurements were conducted by Wandler (2009) to assist the feasibility study and time-lapse seismic interpretation. Figure 4 shows the dry rock measurement results for both compressional and shear velocities from a high permeability sample. Based on the chart, both Pwave and S-wave are sensitive to reservoir pressure changes. The velocities decrease as the differential pressure decreases. In addition, the S-waves have a higher percentage velocity change than the Pwaves, which means S-waves are more sensitive to detecting pressure changes within the reservoir, relative to P-waves. Numerical prediction using the Gassmann equation was solved in order to quantify percentage difference of P-wave velocity due to fluid saturation and reservoir pressure changes. The equation requires input of rock and fluid properties as well as parameters from laboratory measurements such as, dry bulk and dry shear modulus, as shown below:
* K2 * K min K 2

K fl 2 ( K min K fl 2 )

* K1 * K min K1

K fl1 ( K min K fl1 )

Where: K*1,2 : Bulk modulus of saturated rock with fluid(1,2) Kfl(1,2) : Bulk modulus of fluid type(1,2) Kmin : Bulk modulus of the dominant grain mineral : Reservoir porosity Several scenarios were modeled using the Gassmann equation to predict the magnitude of Pimpedance change due to fluid saturation and reservoir pressure changes. The first model depicts the effect of WAG injection that was started in 2007 at Postle Field. Based on this model, the reservoirs P-impedance change due to oil displacement is very small and difficult to detect using seismic data. In the second model, since the field has been pressured by water injection for several years, it is likely that the reservoir has high brine saturation prior to being displaced by CO2 during WAG injection. This

model results in a significant P-impedance difference (-7%) and it is detectable in seismic surveys (Figure 5). CROSS EQUALIZATION The success of every 4D project depends on the ability of seismic to measure small changes in reservoir response to production and injection process (Calvert, 2005). Seismic data can be categorized as repeatable if they are similar to each other in term of signal and noise characteristics. Non-repeatable noise may degrade 4D data repeatability due to different survey acquisition parameters (Rickett & Lumley, 2001) and different processing workflow and algorithms (Ross et al., 1996). Cross equalization (Ross et al., 1996) is a crucial step in reservoir monitoring to improve the repeatability of the data by correcting time shifts, amplitude mismatch, bandwidth difference, and phase shift. These corrections are designed within a static zone outside the reservoir where there are no changes through time and then applied to the dynamic portion. Ideally, after cross equalization, the static zone should have zero difference except within the reservoir where there are changes due to production and/or injection (Ross et al., 1996). Normalized root mean square (NRMS) differences (Kragh & Christie, 2002) can be used to characterize the effectiveness of cross equalization process to improve the repeatability of the data. NRMS attribute can be calculated with the following equation:
NRMS = 2 RMS (a t bt ) RMS (a t ) + RMS (bt )

threshold of 0.9 within 700 ms size window, which includes the reservoir, was used to estimate the phase rotation to match the baseline data. As a result, the phase of the monitor survey was rotated 4 in order to match the phase of base data. The second correction was time shifting. Static and time-variant corrections were applied to the entire volume of monitor data to mitigate time-shift issue on the data due to different soil conditions during the acquisition. Another correction in the cross equalization method was amplitude balancing. A 200 ms size window above the reservoir was used to estimate the static amplitude scalar using the global average method. The scalar was then applied to the whole volume of the monitor data. In order to eliminate residual amplitude mismatch between the base and the monitor data, time-variant amplitude correction followed the process by generating a 3D amplitude gain scalar using trace-by-trace calculation within a 250 ms size sliding window. A 100 ms window near the reservoir horizon was excluded in the calculation to maintain amplitude anomalies due to reservoir changes. The last correction was frequency/spectral balancing. A shaping filter was extracted from 700 ms size window, where the reservoir zone was included in the calculation. This filter then applied to the monitor data to match the frequency spectrum of the baseline survey. This step finalized the cross equalization process, which has improved the data repeatability and decreased the NRMS value from 0.35 to 0.15. Figure 6 shows the comparison of seismic data quality between before and after the application of cross equalization. SEISMIC INVERSION-OF-DIFFERENCE The importance of seismic inversion in this study is to quantify P-impedance differences between time lapse surveys. We applied sparse spike inversion algorithm using Jason Geoscience Workbench software in the inversion-of-difference workflow as it produces higher S/N ratio and more stable results compared to the other algorithms and workflows (Herawati, 2002; Sarkar et al., 2003; Kusuma, 2005). Then inversion-of-difference workflow was started by subtracting the seismic amplitude of the baseline from the monitor data. The result of this subtraction was the seismic input for inversion. Another input was a constant initial P-impedance model. Ideally, the starting model should be zero (no change). However, this would result in negative impedances from the inversion process, which the software cannot handle. Thus, the starting model is a constant

Where at and bt are the seismic traces for different survey within a given window t1-t2. The value of NRMS ranges between 0 and 2. A zero value represents perfect similarity of the surveys, while a value of 2 means the data are 180 out of phase. In the case of completely random data, the calculated NRMS will be 1.41 (Kragh & Christie, 2002). RCP shot the base survey (March 2008) and the monitor survey (December 2008) using the same acquisition and processing parameters. Thus, these 4D surveys have good data repeatability with an average NRMS value of 0.3. However, all aspects in cross equalization were still applied in the process. The first correction was phase and time matching. A global average method with correlation

positive value that is later subtracted from the inversion result to give the impedance change. A random P-impedance value was tested to investigate the consistency of the inversion product. This analysis concluded that this inversion workflow is independent of the value on the initial model. The last important input for the inversion process is the seismic wavelet. An iterative wavelet extraction from the baseline survey and well-seismic tie procedure was conducted to obtain the best wavelet, which closely represents the seismic data. A correlation coefficient of 0.9 within 700 ms size window, including the reservoir zone, indicates an excellent correlation between the generated synthetic seismogram with the measured seismic data. The inversion result does not provide a clear indication of P-impedance changes through the time since all of the values are above 0. In order to have P-impedance volume of the difference, the constant initial model value was taken from the inversion results. This subtraction produced positive and negative numbers, which show increasing and decreasing P-impedance changes from March to December 2008. As the final step, the P-impedance volume of difference was then normalized to obtain the percentage values shown in Figure 7. The maximum value of the percentage P-impedance difference from the inversion result (-7%) matches the rock physics modeling, which predicts maximum negative anomaly of -7% for the case of gas displacing water. This analysis confirms the consistency and reliability of the inversion process.

the study area. The northwest-directed anomaly shows that the injected CO2 in this area travelled outside the production pattern to the west through the fault. This issue made the recovery program less effective. In order to address this problem, several dry holes near the fault were converted to water injection wells to create a water barrier along the fault. As a result, the injected CO2 will stay in the designed production pattern. These faults not only act as permeable conduits for fluids to flow laterally within the reservoir, but also vertically outside the reservoir zone. Figure 8 shows a time shift map, which shows a reflector position change in time domain as the result of velocity changes in the reservoir interval. In this field, the time shift anomaly is predicted to be very small due to thin reservoir thickness. However, there are some significant anomalies along the northeast trending fault, which is interpreted as CO2 accumulation outside the reservoir zone (Figure 8). Two possible scenarios can be attributed to these anomalies. First, the northeast-trending fault could act as a conduit for upward flow out of zone, especially on the west side, where this fault bends and may open fractures up-dip. Second, one of the injector wells near the anomaly could have a wellbore integrity issue, where the injected CO2 may leak to another formation above the reservoir. Based on this analysis, careful inspection is needed to avoid further damaged/losses. The time-lapse anomalies also show three main sand fairways in the braided river system as interpreted by Jobe (2009). These fairways have higher permeability and good connectivity within the reservoir. Thus, it is easier for pressure and injected fluids to propagate along these sand fairways. These anomalies confirm that Morrow A sandstone is a heterogenous reservoir, which cannot be treated as blanket continuous sands in the field production strategy.

RESULTS An integrated interpretation using time-lapse seismic data in conjunction with 3D seismic interpretation, reservoir simulation results, and reservoir engineering data was conducted to understand the time-lapse anomalies and to characterize the reservoir. The time-lapse inversion result (Figure 7) shows a correlation between the interpreted faults and the orientation of time-lapse anomalies. The existence of faults in this field has significant implications for the current production and injection program. They can act not only as fluid flow barriers in some locations if they are sealed, but also as high permeability pathways in other areas, which might reduce the areal effectiveness of the enhanced recovery program. One example is the major northwest trending fault in the southwest corner of

CONCLUSIONS Fluid substitution modeling based on a rock physics approach generated an estimate of expected P-impedance differences as the response to fluid and pressure changes in the reservoir. A maximum reservoir P-impedance change of -7% was predicted due to pressure and saturation changes. The cross equalization process has improved the seismic repeatability by eliminating nonrepeatable noise in the data. The initial NRMS

average value has been lowered from 0.3 to 0.15. A seismic time-lapse of inversion-of-difference workflow was employed using a sparse-spike inversion method to provide quantitative analysis of the anomalies. A maximum magnitude of the anomaly of -7% was obtained using this procedure. Time-lapse anomalies confirm the presence of faults in the study area. These faults have the potential to affect fluid movement in the reservoir by acting as conduits, barriers, and baffles. Time-lapse anomalies show high permeability trends and locate the main sand fairways in the field, which cold be preserved on the downthrown zone of the faults. These high permeability areas may act as thief zones and

decrease the effectiveness of the current injection program.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper is part of Sony R. Mohammads Master Thesis at Colorado School of Mines. The authors acknowledge the stewardship and guidance during the rock physics study by Michael Batzle of CSM and Julianna Toms of ExxonMobil. David Johnston of ExxonMobil provided mentoring in the area of 4D modeling and inversion. We also thank Larry Meckel of CSM, who gave valuable input in the area of geologic interpretation. Finally, we thank all of the RCP students in phase XII, who provided important technical input and discussion during this project.

Figure 1 - (Inset) Location of Postle Field in the panhandle of Oklahoma, Texas County, Oklahoma (Wiley, 2009). The five units in Postle Field are represented by different colors. The peach colored zone is the Hovey Morrow Unit (HMU), where the RCP study area (outlined in blue) is located. Courtesy of Whiting Petroleum Company.

Figure 2 - Regional stratigraphic column of the Anadarko Basin in Postle Field. Courtesy of Whiting Petroleum.

Figure 3 - Production data (Top) and injection data (Bottom) within the RCP study area (Wiley, 2009) shows the good production response to the CO2 injection. Courtesy of Whiting Petroleum Company.

Figure 4 - Dry rock laboratory experiment result for permeable sample, which shows pressure sensitivity on both P-wave and S-wave velocities (Wandler, 2009).

Figure 5 - P-impedance percentage difference of gas replacing water. This is the most likely saturation case in Postle since this field has undergone water injection for years and currently is in (WAG) injection program. Significant P-impedance difference (-7%) is resolvable on seismic.

Figure 6 - A NRMS comparison of two RCP time lapse data before and after the application of cross equalization presents data quality improvement especially in the middle area. NRMS value, which was calculated within 800-1000 ms was lowered from an average value of 0.35 to 0.15.

Figure 7 - The P-impedance of difference map, which was calculated from the RCP baseline (March 2008) and the RCP monitor (December 2008) volumes, depicts a strong correlation between faults (blue and green lines) and the orientation of the time lapse anomalies. This leads to an interpretation that the faults (green) provide high permeable pathway for fluids to move, and thus decrease the efficiency of the current injection program.

Figure 8 - Time shift attribute map was extracted within 10 ms window at 20 ms below the Morrow A horizon. About 2 ms time shift anomalies were detected along the curved faults, which are interpreted as the response of CO2 accumulation in the reservoir and in the fractured Morrow Shale.