New Technology Magazine

UofC's CHORUS Partners With Ikon Science For Geophysical Research Into Unconventional Reservoirs

CHORUS, the global leader in the investigation of reservoir characterization for enhanced heavy oil recovery, has formed a new partnership with Ikon Science, the global geoprediction company, to work on a pioneering initiative which is set to bring applied science to the industry for the production of tight sands and unconventional plays.

The CHORUS research project at the University of Calgary has been studying hot and cold heavy oil production for more than 14 years. The ultimate purpose of CHORUS projects to-date has been to determine how cost effective seismic monitoring and reservoir characterization modelling can be developed, to optimize exploitation plans for heavy oil reservoirs. Its existing work spans seismic monitoring, reservoir characterization, reservoir geology field core measurements and engineering simulations.

On realizing the growing attention focused on applied geophysics for imaging fractures between boreholes, CHORUS became interested in extending its work beyond heavy oil, and into the realm of unconventional reservoirs. It set out goals for this new area of geophysical research in 2014.

CHORUS runs integrated reservoir science research thesis projects in collaboration with the University of Calgary (Department of Geoscience and the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering) and an integrated technical development consortium comprised of several industry sponsor companies. For this new venture into unconventional reservoir research studies, CHORUS formed a partnership with Ikon Science.

"When our graduate students use leading industry software at the thesis level of their research studies, they gain a cutting edge foothold in the future oil and gas industry. Reservoir team collaboration with the multi-science industry groups leads to new discoveries and new coding. Our graduate researchers can focus on the new and needed industry field science," commented software industry manager for CHORUS, Joan Embleton.

"Ikon Science's software RokDoc is the ideal mature and full-featured platform for our quantitative reservoir investigations. RokDoc provides the databases, the viewers and industry standard approaches which CHORUS can then build upon to advance University of Calgary thesis projects."

Ikon Science is recognized as a science-driven company and a leader in the delivery of technology for quantitative interpretation and rock physics. With numerous modules already dedicated to heavy oil reservoirs, CHORUS can leverage this software and expertise to expedite thesis projects and other diversified research collaborative objectives.

"We will benefit from the interaction with leading edge research into unconventional oil and gas reservoirs, in particular where it involves our existing geomechanics technology," said Rob Dudley, VP Ikon Science, Canada.

"Ikon Science is committed to providing academic institutions with technology, resources and training to help develop methodologies and technology that will target and drill more successful, profitable and safe wells. We will be involved in consortium meetings and gain exposure within the research community for our work with unconventional reservoirs."

Via an ongoing application of rigorous science and continuous investment in innovative R&D, Ikon Science has built a global business based on understanding and predicting rock properties and their relationships. RokDoc allows its global users to establish the relationships between the constituents of the rocks, the fabric of the rock, the state of stress, the pressures, the elastic properties and the seismic amplitudes.

In addition to these unconventional projects, Ikon Science will help the original consortium team that specializes in enhanced heavy oil cold production processes. This assistance will be two fold, with Ikon delivering support to CHORUS graduate students and researchers to best utilize the RokDoc tools to meet research objectives, and with the attendance of Ikon Science experts at Consortium meetings.

Work carried out by CHORUS is leading toward a greater understanding of the various reservoir properties and will enhance the production of oil fields in Canada and beyond. CHORUS research is a University of Calgary Research Consortium that does a great deal of thesis publishing in SEG, CSEG, EAGE, Science Journal and Interpretation journals both in North America and internationally. To be kept up to date on the public findings of this work follow Ikon Science on linkedin or www.ikonscience.com or the CHORUS group at www.chorusoil.ca.

Ikon Science is a global GeoPrediction technology company providing industry leadership in the prediction of reservoir properties, pressures and fluids. The RokDoc software platform, integrates Quantitative Interpretation, GeoMechanics and GeoPressure. Ikon Science's RokDoc software platform and related services are used in over 200 leading oil, gas, energy and service companies throughout the world. Ikon Science, founded in 2001, has over 220 staff. The company is privately owned and investors include Fleming Family & Partners and Tullow Oil plc.

-NTM-