Application of PSInSAR Technology to Monitor and Characterize the Petroleum Reservoir

Abstract

Reservoir monitoring improves our understanding of reservoir behaviour and helps achieve more effective reservoir management and prediction of future performance with obvious economic benefits. It relies on an integrated approach involving both surveillance (well or surface based; seismic, electrical, leakage, flow and deformation measurements, etc.) and modelling. Surface deformation monitoring can provide valuable constraints on the dynamic behaviour of a reservoir enabling the evaluation of volumetric changes in the reservoir through time. There is a technology along with 3-D and 4-D seismic, electromagnetic, velocity modelling, however, that is generating interest among operators – the ability to monitor reservoirs and generate surface deformation measurements from space. This is achieved through Permanent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSARTM), a remote sensing technique based on satellite radar systems circling the globe, capable of accurately measuring ground displacement. PSInSARTM is one of the most promising and cost-effective techniques capable of providing high precision and high areal density displacement measurements over long periods of time. Moreover, the availability of PS data for both ascending and descending orbits enables the estimation of both vertical and E–W horizontal displacement fields.