InSAR - Pro-Active remote sensing for reservoir management and monitoring environmental safety

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a satellite-based technology that measures minute changes of surface elevation through time. These deformation changes, often less than 1 mm/month, may be caused by changes in the subsurface (e.g., imbalance between fluid withdrawal and injection, collapse of underground mines), or changes at the ground surface (e.g., surface blisters caused by shallow injection of steam or out-of-zone fluid movement, slope failures). Radar waves from successive passes of polarorbiting satellites provide trillions of 3m by 3m pixels worldwide on a daily to monthly frequency. Using cloud computing and interferometry, the pixels over areas of interest can be used to monitor activities within oil and gas reservoirs, and also to give warnings of possible problems developing at the surface. Examples are shown for the Belridge giant oil field (California), Groningen giant gas field (the Netherlands), and the Peace River area (Alberta). In the three cases, surface deformation is used to monitor areal conformance in the reservoirs. Also, having satellite passes every 11 days means that reservoirs can be monitored proactively and the resultant datasets have the potential to replace traditional 4D seismic at a cost that is significantly less.