Reservoir Characterization and Heavy Oil Production

Summary Given the prediction that most of Alberta oil production in the 21st Century will come from existing heavy oil fields, there is a growing demand for the synergistic integration of geology, geophysics, and reservoir engineering in order to optimize production from these fields. Effective reservoir characterization and production will re q u i re teamwork between geoscience and engineering. This is especially true in the development of heavy oil fields where there are dozens (possibly hundreds) of wells to be combined with 3-D seismic data sets. In this paper, we examine case history examples from a number of Canadian oil fields. We focus on the combined use of engineering and geoscience, while reviewing past results and forecasting future directions.