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1 Imperial Oil Resources, Research Center, 3535 Research Road N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2L 2K8, Canada; stan.stancliffe{at}iol.sprint.com
2 Atlantis Scientific Inc., 20 Colonnade Road, Suite 110, Nepean, Ontario, K2E 7N6, Canada; marco{at}atlsci.com
Stan Stancliffe is a petroleum geoscientist with Imperial Oil Resources in Calgary. He received his geology B.Sc. degree at the University of Southampton in England and an M.Sc. degree in micropalaeontology and palynology from the University of Hull. His Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, involved the study of palynomorphs from the Upper Jurassic of Britain. Subsequent postdoctoral work took him to Nagasaki University to study Tertiary palynomorphs and to the Imperial Oil Research Center, Calgary, where he instigated palynofacies work on Lower Cretaceous sediments in northeastern Alberta. He has published articles on palynomorph morphology, evolution, classification, and biostratigraphy from around the globe. His present interests include remote sensing, production geology of bitumen oil fields, and the depositional environments of clastic sediments.Marco van der Kooij is managing the Earth Observation Services Division at Atlantis Scientific Inc. in Ottawa. He received his M.Sc. degree in aerospace engineering from Delft University in the Netherlands in 1988. He has a research background in radar remote sensing and was employed at TNO Physics and Electronics in the Netherlands and as a research fellow at the Canada Center for Remote Sensing. His experience includes the development of synthetic-aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) methodology and its application in the generation of digital elevation models and accurate deformation maps. He has published articles related to spaceborne and airborne remote sensing for land and ocean applications.
The Cold Lake heavy oil field has been studied by geoscientists for more than 30 years and has been producing bitumen for 20 years using the cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) process. Future development options can be improved by the resolution of steam movement and the avoidance of areas of faults and fractures. To locate these features, remote sensing has recently been investigated as a cheaper alternative to four-dimensional seismic surveys.
Advances in satellite and radar technology have made it possible to measure very small movements of the earth's surface found in earthquake zones and volcanic regions. The technique uses synthetic-aperture radar interferometry (InSAR), allowing the measurement of deformation using a vertical resolution, in optimal conditions, on the order of millimeters between repeat acquisitions. This accuracy has only been achieved over dry areas without significant vegetation growth. At the Cold Lake oil field, it has been reported previously that the injection of steam to mobilize the bitumen causes the pump jacks to heave and subside by as much as 30 cm during the first steam cycle. The present project was instigated to determine if such small positive and negative vertical movements could be resolved over the field. Data from three satellite radar sensors were selected: ERS (European remote sensing satellite), JERS (Japanese remote sensing satellite) and Radarsat (the Canadian radar satellite). The present article has provided the first results of repeat-pass InSAR using JERS SAR data for the land subsidence application area. Contrary to the widespread belief that this technology can only be used for dry areas, we show that accurate results, on the order of a centimeter in resolution, can be obtained in a forested area such as Cold Lake using the JERS L-band spaceborne SAR system.
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