Quantitative methods for reservoir characterization and improved recovery application to heavy oil sands

Improved prediction of interwell reservoir heterogeneity is needed to improve productivity and to reduce recovery cost for California's heavy oil sands, which contain approximately 2.3 billion barrels of remaining reserves in the Temblor Formation and in other formations of the San Joaquin Valley. This investigation involves application of advanced analytical property-distribution methods conditioned to continuous outcrop control for improved reservoir characterization and simulation. The proposed investigation is being performed in collaboration with Chevron Production Company U.S.A. as an industrial partner, and incorporates data from the Temblor Formation in Chevron's West Coalinga Field. The first twelve months of the project have focused on collecting data for characterization and modeling. In addition, data from Coalinga Field has been analyzed to define the fractal structure present in the data set. The following sections of the report parallel the first four subtasks of the investigation.