SAGD Design Concerns

Different Shale types affect steam flow differently Need to differentiate between Shale Rip-up Clasts and laminated shale for optimized SAGD designs

The reservoir was to be produced using SAGD so some special considerations had to be taken into account. It is very important to note that different shale types affect steam and petroleum flows differently. It was therefore very important to differentiate between shale rip-up clasts, which are essentially boulders of shale surrounded by otherwise normal sand; and shale laminae, which are layered shale bedding that could extend uninterrupted for the length of the reservoir.

SAGD Design Concerns

Steam flows around rip-up clasts...

Displayed in the diagram, shale rip-ups simply present an obstacle around which the steam flows fairly easily.

SAGD Design Concerns

But theres no steam flow around laminated shale bedding

In this diagram however, there is a shale lamination that prevents the steam from propagating into the far reaches of the reservoir. Clearly, if an electrical imaging tool is to be used in place of cutting core, this distinction between laminae and rip-ups must be made correctly for the procedure to be viable.

SAGD Design Concerns

Rip-up clasts in core and EMI

That means that the next step was to try to identify shale rip-up clasts and shale laminations in the electrical image alone. To do this, we first found examples of shale rip-ups in the core and then compared them to the electrical image over the same interval. Here you can see another EMI-core composite plot showing both the normalized and static EMI images. Enlarged, it is possible to see what is interpreted as a shale rip-up clast in the static EMI image. They appear as irregular, dark features that contrast nicely with the background image of the otherwise clean sand

SAGD Design Concerns

Laminated shale in core and EMI

Contrasted to the appearance of rip-ups, laminations appear as solid black features in the static image. The laminations are visible in the core here as well as in the EMI.

SAGD Design Concerns

Laminated shale in core and EMI

In the normalized image, there are lamination boundaries visible. Therefore we need to use the static electrical image to tell where the shale laminations are located, then use the one meter normalized image to verify that the thin shale feature is actually laminated.