Geophysics Comes Of Age In Oil Sands Development

Most energy forecasters predict that the development of shallow heavy oil reserves in Canada’s<br>enormous oil sand deposits will play a vital role in bridging the gap between North America’s<br>reliance on conventional oil in this century, and the full integration of alternative energy supplies<br>in the next century. Over the last year, a number of surface geophysical techniques have been<br>successfully applied to oil sands exploration and development. These innovations have come<br>after over fifteen years of near stagnation in the area of innovative applications of geophysics to<br>the oil sands. These applications include the direct exploration and detection of oil sands, the<br>calculation of bitumen saturation from surface, the exploration for water supplies beneath the oil<br>sands, geological mapping, mapping and imaging of thick clays and shales for geotechnical<br>purposes, and non-intrusive monitoring of leachate plumes. Geophysical techniques successfully<br>applied to these problems include 2-D electrical resistivity imaging, transient EM, ground<br>penetrating radar, and high resolution seismic reflection. Other techniques which will probably<br>be used in the very near future include induced polarization, surface nuclear magnetic resonance,<br>and various push-probe sensing techniques. This paper will review present applications of the<br>above techniques in the surface mineable ore reserves of the Athabasca deposit.