SAGD and Fiber-Optic Distributed Acoustic and Temperature Sensing

Abstract

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 180726, “SAGD Production Observations With Fiber-Optic Distributed Acoustic and Temperature Sensing,” by Warren MacPhail and James Kirkpatrick, Devon, and Ben Banack, Bryan Rapati, and Alex Ali Asfouri, Halliburton, prepared for the 2016 SPE Canada Heavy Oil Technical Conference, Calgary, 7–9 June. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Distributed temperature sensing (DTS) is the most common fiberoptic measurement used for steam-assisted- gravity-drainage (SAGD) reservoir monitoring. In 2013, Devon Canada installed DTS in the trial production well at its Jackfish 2 asset. DTS was installed parallel to existing standard instrumentation. In early 2015, a distributed-acoustic-sensing (DAS) fiber-optic line was added in parallel along with multimode optic fiber, allowing simultaneous logging of DTS and DAS. DAS helped to improve confidence in and extend the definition of wellbore effects observed with DTS. Background DTS with a fiber-optic cable has been established as a reliable and tested method for monitoring thermal wellbores in heavy-oil production. For its part, DAS has been established as a valuable diagnostic tool in unconventional reservoirs as a completion, stimulation, and production-monitoring tool. DAS interrogators turn a fiber-optic line into an array of thousands of virtual microphones, picking up acoustic signatures across a broad range of frequencies. In SAGD production, DAS has generated significant interest throughout the industry as a potential new reservoir- monitoring tool.