Chapter 1 - Introduction

01-01 - Course Introduction (30 min.) Sample Lesson

Chapter 2 - Definition, Origin, and Occurrences of Heavy Oil

02-01 - Definition and Origin of Heavy Oil (14 min.)
02-02 - Origins of Heavy Oil (17 min.)
02-03 - Unconsolidated Nature of the Oil Sands (11 min.) Quiz: 02-03 - Unconsolidated Nature of the Oil Sands

Chapter 3 - Recovery Methods for Heavy Oil

03-01 - Mining and Cold-Flow Methods (14 min.)
03-02 - Cold Flow Field Examples (17 min.)
03-03 - Heavy Oil Production Technologies - CHOPS (9 min.)
03-04 - Heavy Oil Production Technologies - Solvents (25 min.)
03-05 - Thermal Recovery Methods (Non-SAGD) (20 min.)
03-06 - Heavy Oil Production Technologies - Steam Flood (9 min.)
03-07 - Heavy Oil Production Technologies - CSS (26 min.)
03-08 - SAGD Thermal Recovery Method (25 min.)
03-09 - SAGD Thermal Recovery Method - continued (15 min.)
03-10 - Variations of SAGD (23 min.) Quiz: 03-10 - Variations of SAGD

Chapter 4 - Distribution of Heavy Oil and Projects

04-01 - Global Occurrences of Heavy Oil and Projects (12 min.)
04-02 - Heavy Oil Regions of China (13 min.)
04-03 - Heavy Oil Regions of Venezuela (12 min.)
04-04 - Heavy Oil Regions of North America (13 min.)
04-05 - Heavy Oil Regions of Alberta - Overview (13 min.)
04-06 - Heavy Oil Regions of Alberta - Peace River (20 min.)
04-07 - Heavy Oil Regions of Alberta -Cold Lake (16 min.)
04-08 - Heavy Oil Regions of Alberta -Athabasca (20 min.)
04-09 - Production Trends in Heavy Oil (12 min.) Quiz: 04-09 - Production Trends in Heavy Oil

Chapter 5 - Sandstone Heavy Oil Reservoirs and their Environments of Deposition

05-01 - Shoreface and Deltaic Reservoirs (22 min.)
05-02 - Fluvial and other Channelized Reservoirs (17 min.)
05-03 - Shoreface Reservoir Implications (10 min.)
05-04 - Deltaic Deposits (8 min.)
05-05 - Deltaic Deposits In Core & Outcrop (15 min.)
05-06 - Deltaic Sandstones - Reservoir Implications (10 min.)
05-07 - Fluvial and other Channelized Reservoirs (15 min.)
05-08 - Braided Rivers (9 min.)
05-09 - Meandering Rivers (30 min.)
05-10 - Incised Valleys (12 min.)
05-11 - Fluvial Sandstones In Core and Outcrop (19 min.)
05-12 - Fluvial Sandstones : Reservior Implications (24 min.)
05-13 - Matching Recovery Process to Reservoir Type (25 min.) Quiz: 05-13 - Matching Recovery Process to Reservoir Type

Chapter 6 - Heavy Oil Geology Applied to Field Exploration

06-01 - Petroleum System Elements and Exploration Data Collection (25 min.)
06-02 - Exploration with focus on Reservoir Elements (12 min.)
06-03 - Exploration With Focus On Caprock Elements (28 min.)
06-04 - Exploration With Focus on Water Source and Disposal Elements (25 min.) Quiz: 06-04 - Exploration With Focus on Water Source and Disposal Elements

Chapter 7 - Heavy Oil Geology Applied to Field Development

07-01 - Data Collection for Field Development (15 min.)
07-02 - Caprock Integrity Studies (24 min.)
07-03 - Reservoir Heterogeneity (27 min.)
07-04 - Reservoir Fluid Impairments (22 min.)
07-05 - Fluid Impairments (8 min.)
07-06 - Reservoir Characterization and Forecasting (23 min.)
07-07 - Pad and Horzontal Well Planning (28 min.) Quiz: 07-07 - Pad and Horzontal Well Planning

Chapter 8 - Heavy Oil Geology Applied to Field Production

08-01 - Sand Control (18 min.)
08-02 - Caprock Monitoring (9 min.)
08-03 - Production Monitoring – Wells and Post-steam Cores (20 min.)
08-04 - Production Monitoring – Seismic (13 min.)
08-05 - SAGD Optimization (FCDs, Infills, NCG Co-injection) (24 min.)
08-06 - SAGD Production - NCG-CO Injection (17 min.) Quiz: 08-06 - SAGD Production - NCG-CO Injection

Chapter 9 - Wrap-Up Discussion

09-01 - Course Conclusion (18 min.)

Geoscience of Heavy Oil Reservoirs / Chapter 1 - Introduction

Lesson 01-01 - Course Introduction

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Transcript

01. Lesson 1.01: Course Introduction 02. Chapter 1 Outline 03. Instructor Biography 04. Course Description 05. Course Description (2)06. Importance of Heavy Oil and Oil Sands 07. Outline 08. Learning Goals 09. Learning Goals (2)10. Teaching Approach 11. Instructor Contact Information

01. Lesson 1.01: Course Introduction

Hi everyone! Welcome to a course on Geoscience of Heavy Oil Reservoirs with applications to exploration, development, and production.

02. Chapter 1 Outline

We'll just go over the outline. I'll have a few words about myself as an instructor. We'll do a course description, go through the chapters content of the course. We will talk about learning goals, hopefully what everyone will come away with from this course. And I'll just have a few words about my teaching approach.

03. Instructor Biography

So this is my biography. It's kind of like a LinkedIn profile, if you will. My education is from the University of Alberta, where I did a bachelor's and master's degree. And then I had the chance to go to the University of Wyoming to do my PhD. That was a great experience, by the way. Wyoming has beautiful rocks, wonderful people, and really enjoyed our time there.
When it came time to work my first full-time job, I was up in Calgary with Imperial Oil and I worked there for just under 5 years. And during that time I did work some heavy oil projects. In fact my very first job was with the... it was called the Athabasca Team. And they weren't doing SAGD projects at that time, but they were evaluating some of their land, and I worked on one of those projects for maybe a year and a half. And I did, of course, a few other jobs during that time. So I bounced around the geology of the Mackenzie Delta for a brief period of time. For an even briefer period of time, I did some petrophysics of East Coast Canada. And then I spent probably about 2 years working Southern Alberta, which was a really good experience working shallow gas and investigating deeper channels that occur in Southern Alberta on the shallow gas lands. v Anyways, I went to Petro Canada after about 5 years with Imperial, and right away I started working U.S. Exploration and right away I was back to Wyoming geology. I worked the Bighorn Basin, the Powder River basin, as well as other basins in the Rocky Mountain areas. I had a chance to move to Denver with the U.S. exploration team, but I said, I just kind of spent 5 years in the States pretty close to Denver... in Wyoming, so I decided I wanted to work production and that came to my first job in the Mackay River SAGD project. So that's heavy oil geology. I was a senior geologist on the team for a few years, planning SAGD wells and drilling winter programs. So vertical wells. Maybe well counts that might be like 40 or 60 wells in a winter along with theseismic programs. In fact, I was there for the first seismic program at Mackay River.
And then the Suncor Energy merger happened. I kind of stayed in the same job, but I moved into management of the Mackay River SAGD geoscience team, which was a small team and we had a really good time working the geology there. And then I had a chance to work into a technical advising position. So I was geoscience advisor for the in-situ group at Suncor. So that included the Mackay River SAGD asset, the Firebag SAGD asset, and then emerging projects which include properties which are not producing at this time, but it was in the Meadow Creek Project, the Lewis Project, and others. And this advising job was a chance to work across different in-situ groups. I worked with geoscientists on training. I did technical peer reviews as well. So working with teams as they propose their next winter program or their next pad of horizontal wells. Maybe, depending on your outlook, I had some less exciting jobs, which were to write technical standards for the team to ensure that across the different teams, myself and the geoscience managers agreed on certain workflows that we thought were the best for the group. And then I did some special project work, some of which included regulatory. So, for example, there was a shallow SAGD directive proposed by the provincial government. That's the Directive 86. And I had a chance to work with our people, and then joining with other oil company representatives we proposed changes and edits to the draft Directive 86. So that's just an example of a regulatory project that I worked.
As a geoscience advisor, I had the chance to do some training with the team. So some of the courses I had done, some of those courses we're taught for about 10 years. One of them was the Geology for Engineers and Non-Geologists. Probably a few hundred people at Suncor had gone through that course over 10 years. Another course is the Fluvial Field course and a Shoreface course and a Petroleum Systems course, which was mostly run for students and people that are new to the oil and gas industry. And then I had a chance to work on an integrated reservoir characterization course. I see I have it written here as Integrated Reservoir Management and Uncertainty course. That course, actually when it was first ran, took us down to Colorado and Utah to teach the course while looking at the outcrops in the Book Cliffs area. And later we modified that course to include the Drumheller area outcrops and keep it a bit shorter to be a bit more accessible for a Calgary audience. So most of the courses I've taught though have involved field components and core components, which means we're at the core lab looking at the tables of core. So I must admit, this environment is a little bit different than what I'm used to, but I hope I can have a chance to introduce some of the concepts that we try to drive home when we're doing field and core courses, because some of those concepts will be pretty important to understanding heavy oil performance from the reservoirs that we're gonna be looking at in this course.
And then finally, just at the bottom of the page here, I left my company a year and a bit ago. So I'm now working as a consultant. And part of my consulting is offering geoscience courses, including the ones listed above, and modifications of those. And again, most of my training does involve field and core components. Again, I believe those are important aspects of geoscience, and I really appreciate the fact that people gravitate towards the rocks. It brings out the curiosity in people, and hopefully we'll try to feather some of that into this course and get people thinking about what this might look at... what the reservoirs might look like in outcrop or in core, and we'll talk about that as we go along.

04. Course Description

So this course, really the goal is to present the major concepts of petroleum and sedimentary geology. And with a tweak, we're going to apply these to heavy oil fields. I want to drive home focusing on the value of geoscience data and interpretations. We might have some examples of what may happen if we try to skip some data collection or if our interpretation is not valid. We'll have a few examples, field studies that capture some of those. And I really want to drive home the direct impact of understanding the geology of the reservoir and what it means to the reservoirheterogeneity... how compartmentalized might the reservoir be and how that affects the recovery method that is going to be used at that field and how that affects production.
We'll talk about in this course some of the geoscience datasets used to understand the subsurface, not just heavy oil fields, but also just any common datasets such as wells, seismic, and core. We will go over the sedimentary rocks and their environments of deposition, specifically sandstones. And we want to link sedimentary environments with the reservoir heterogeneity. And at the second half of the course, we'll look at heavy oil geoscience techniques applied to exploration, development, and production. I put SAGD here as an emphasis. That will be me speaking from my experience in SAGD. But we will try to touch on some other recovery methods as well.
And that's kind of what I'm pulling up on the next paragraph here. So multiple examples and case studies are drawn from my direct experience in SAGD, thermal recovery of heavy oil. Most of that is in the McMurray formation, Athabasca region in Alberta, Canada. We'll try to discuss other recovery methods beyond SAGD, but when it comes to the second half of the course, alot of the examples will come from my personal experience with SAGD and case studies that involve SAGD.

05. Course Description (2)

So who should attend? This course is designed for essentially junior to senior engineers and geoscientists, especially those that are looking to gain familiarity with heavy oil reservoirs. The benefits of the course, at least as I see it, will be improved communication between integrated team members. So if you're a geoscientist, you may use some of this course material to communicate concepts to the engineering team down the hall. And if you're an engineer, you might be interested in watching this course and picking up pieces so that you can communicate and ask better questions to the geoscience members of your team. And again, the second benefit of the course would be a greater appreciation that understanding the geology of the heavy oil projects is positively correlated with better business decisions.
OK. So these lectures are available to you online. You can jump around or you could follow the course in sequence and follow Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc.. Feel free to go back to the start. And what I will do is I'll provide references at the end of each chapter. Some of those have links. I will be pointing out references that I think are the most important references in the field... those that would be of most use to you.
So as I mentioned, I really believe that some of the optimal teaching methods for some of the concepts that we're going to discuss here would be to supplement lectures with outcrop analogs and cores from producing assets. So we're not going to go look at core today and we're not going to go to the outcrop. But what we'll try to do is include some images of those datasets throughout the course and try to show the value of those datasets as we go along.

06. Importance of Heavy Oil and Oil Sands

So just a word on the importance of heavy oil and oil sands, so essentially why is this course valuable? Certainly at this time, production of heavy oil is increasing both globally and in Canadian oil sands. So I'm based in Calgary and the Alberta market and the Canadian bitumen production from mining is growing. Bitumen production from mining is around 1.6 MMbbls/d. And the production from in-situ methods of different kinds is just slightly more than that. It's around 1.7 MMbbls/d. So in Alberta, that's a significant piece of Alberta's production. And where Alberta goes, Canada also goes. So the oilsands and heavy oil is a big part of Canada's production.
So one thing about heavy oil projects is they're often viewed as attractive because they can have favorable economics (depending on all the other business environment inputs) and they've got large in-place volumes. So an example is an in-situ project that I was involved with doing peer reviews for a future in-situ project, and it had about 6 MMMbbls in place. So pretty big numbers and most mining and in-situ project areas would include volumes of 5 billion barrels in place. So that's pretty significant. You simply can't find alot of areas with oil volumes like that in place outside of heavy oil projects.
A few examples from SAGD are these really good SAGD projects, the ones that would be the best of the best, they've got exceptional oil recovery from mature pads. And these mature pads, they still continue to develop significant volumes to the project. And the timeline here would be on the order of 15 - 20 years. So if you're operating a SAGD field, one of the interesting things is that the mature pads that were started in 2002 or 2003 are probably still producing today and they're adding significant volumes to the field. So the decline rates exist. Those pads are declining. But the overall volume from those mature pads is still significant. So people are not rushing to abandon those original pads. So long pad life from these mature pads.
And just a few words about heavy oil projects. These do require significant capital investments. But the tradeoff is you can get a long field life. The mining projects, if you're a company that has both and you might be interested in... should my next project be a mining project or should it be in-situ project? So the mining projects definitely have lower emissions, but a larger land impact... surface land through open pit mining. But the in-situ projects have lower land impact but generally higher emissions. So in today's environment, and I've got a chapter coming up on oil sands and heavy oil production trends, but the emissions factor does come into play. And when we're trying to forecast heavy oil production out into the future, we have to look at different scenarios, where you might forecast production based on policies and government regulations as they stand today vs. how they might be in 5 or 10 years time.

07. Outline

OK, here's the list of chapters that will be the complete course. So right now we're in Chapter 1. And pretty simple. We'll do a definition of heavy oil in Chapter 2. We'll talk about recovery methods in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 would be distribution of heavy oil projects. That'll be global and then later on zooming in to the Alberta assets. Chapter 5 is the sandstone reservoirs and their environments of deposition. And we'll talk about how we match heavy oil recovery methods sometimes to the reservoir type. And then Chapters 6, 7, 8 are really how do we use geoscience to optimize field life as we go through the different stages of exploration, development, and production.

08. Learning Goals

So I just have a few learning goals here in a bit more detail. 1) At the end of this course, we want all participants to understand the types of heavy oils and their definition. 2) Would be do understand the common recovery methods for heavy oil deposits. 3) Is looking at the petroleum systems and how heavy oil occurs. 4) Is become familiar with the global occurrences of major heavy oil fields. So I'll have some examples. When we get there we'll talk about heavy oil fields in China and in Venezuela, and this will not be extensive, but it'll just try to pass along the flavor of where some major heavy oil fields occur around the globe. And then, like I said, we'll move into the Alberta heavy oil projects after that. 5) We'll be talking about the key datasets that we commonly collect and are used to understand the subsurface, some of which are a little bit unique to heavy oil. So alot of geologists will use logs, will useseismic, but in maybe heavy oil we'll really stress the value of core or we'll really stress the value of image logs or 4D seismic. So we'll have some material on that as we get to it. 6) Another goal is that we'll go over these major types of sedimentary rocks and the environments they're in. And remember we're going to link that to the reservoir heterogeneity or how compartmentalized the reservoir is. Oh, there you go. That's kind of what I'm about to say here, is 7) understand how these depositional environments control reservoir geometries. So the shape of the reservoir, the reservoir heterogeneity and the rock properties, right, the detailed rock properties. 8) And then we'll look at these rock properties and see how they're measured and modeled.

09. Learning Goals (2)

Just a few more goals. 9) We'll look at these key components of a prospective exploration area, in addition to the reservoir units. So for example, we would want a seal above our reservoir, especially for injecting steam in there. And that's coming up here. 10) So we've got these different components, so the cap rock or the seal. We also would love to have a water source nearby. And we would like to have a disposal zone. That would be all part of a package that we'd be looking for as we explore an area for a heavy oil project. 11) There are some data collection requirements, and some of them are regulated by government organizations. So they might have some types of data collections that are required. But we will also talk about what would be necessary to really understand the subsurface and develop the field in a successful manner. 12) We want to talk about key reservoir impairments that, if present, they will pose development challenges. 13) And we want to understand key production monitoring techniques. So how to characterize your reservoir in the subsurface and what techniques we can use to do this. 14) You can tell I'm mentioning this point a few times here... Understanding how geology strongly controls reservoir performance. 15) And the final learning goal, hopefully you can say that you'll enjoy some improved communication within your team. So again, talking to someone down the hall, you might be able to ask a better question or simply understand a little bit more at your next meeting or your next presentation.

10. Teaching Approach

So just a few words about teaching approach. The first part of the course has some overview chapters. So for example, the global distribution of heavy oil I must admit it's not my area of expertise. So we will talk about some heavy oil examples, heavy oil fields in China, in Venezuela, California. And we'll go over what they have there for heavy oil, what techniques are used, but I can't claim to be an expert on those fields. But I think it'll again provide us with a flavor and a bit of background before we dive into the second half of the course, which has more detailed examples from SAGD developments.
References will be added to the end of each chapter or lesson. And I've tried to select examples, if possible, that are accessible to all. So alot of journals have paywalls where essentially you do have to pay for their articles, which is great for them. But what we'll do is try to steer you towards some material that's available to everyone. And then if you want, you can dive into as much levels of detail as you like. One of the things that I will pull examples from, there's public annual reports from companies to various regulatory bodies. So to give you an example, if we're looking at a SAGD field in Alberta that is operating, they have to provide an annual performance presentation to the AlbertaEnergy Regulator. And so those are public documents. They do include the latest production data from the field and the latest data that they've collected. So I'm going to be using some examples, and these are the best examples to use because they do come from operating fields and not just operating fields but operating fields in Alberta where the regulator essentially demands that we have more public information. So that's good news for a course like this.
Maybe a few words about the style of this course. Again, alot of my courses have been in the field or in the core lab... with a little bit of lecture, so there's some lecture with those courses. But I must admit this format is a little bit new to me. My style is generally informal. Hopefully, without us being face to face, I'd like to approach a conversational style. I'm certainly less of a professor and more of a working geologist. I will be speaking from experience, so as much as possible I will try to bring in examples that come from experience. And alot of those examples, they can be referenced. You can fact-check me later, that's fine. And again, part of my style is to work and communicate the value of geoscience, which is something that's been part of my career for many years.

11. Instructor Contact Information

I just have my contact information here. The bottom link is essentially a LinkedIn profile. I've got a business email there. And I know that it's kind of hard to get feedback in a course like this, but I'm essentially open to feedback. And if anyone takes this course and wants to discuss something in more detail, or if you have questions about references or field production rates or something like that, feel free to jot that email down. That's something that I could probably help you with in the future. And again, I do teach courses that would involve field and core components, so essentially I would view that as kind of the next step. So feel free to keep in touch.