Facies Analysis and Architectural Elements Within a Fluvio-EstuarineSedimentary System: The Lower Cretaceous Bituminous Sandstones of the MacMurrayFormation, Alberta (Canada)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Facies Analysis and Architectural Elements Within a Fluvio-Estuarine Sedimentary System: The Lower Cretaceous Bituminous Sandstones of the MacMurray Formation, Alberta (Canada) Julien Bailleul; Julien Bailleul Total Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Vincent Delhaye-Prat; Vincent Delhaye-Prat Total Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Olivier Parize Olivier Parize Ecole Des Mines de Paris Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Paper presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, September 2006. Paper Number: SPE-103000-MS https://doi.org/10.2118/103000-MS Published: September 24 2006 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Get Permissions Search Site Citation Bailleul, Julien, Delhaye-Prat, Vincent, and Olivier Parize. "Facies Analysis and Architectural Elements Within a Fluvio-Estuarine Sedimentary System: The Lower Cretaceous Bituminous Sandstones of the MacMurray Formation, Alberta (Canada)." Paper presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, September 2006. doi: https://doi.org/10.2118/103000-MS Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll ProceedingsSociety of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition Search Advanced Search AbstractIn north-eastern Alberta (Canada), the fluvio-estuarine McMurray Formation constitutes the main bitumen accumulation of the Athabasca Heavy Oil Province. Deposited within the fluvial-to-marine transition zone, the McMurray clastic succession is characterized by the lateral and vertical juxtaposition of a wide variety of depositional processes. This led to complex lithofacies variations responsible for uncertainties in predicting reservoir heterogeneities.In this context, a realistic paleogeographic reconstitution is necessary to localize sandy reservoirs and optimize the exploitation of bituminous sandstones. The sedimentological study of the McMurray reservoir, based on outcrops and subsurface data (cores, well logs, seismic profiles), has been undertaken along a 150 km north (distal) - south (proximal) transect.Facies analysis permits to constrain depositional environments within the McMurray Formation. We document in detail facies associations corresponding to continental (fluvial/palustral/paleosols facies), estuarine (interaction between tide and fluvial processes) and marine environments (wave-tide to wave dominated processes). A particular attention has been paid to the nature, size, geometry and bounding surfaces of architectural elements (i.e. fluvial or estuarine channels, IHS/point-bars, tidal bars, incised valley, emerged surfaces). Stratigraphic correlations, combined with cartographic analysis, allow to evaluate how these sedimentary bodies are related in time and space. The McMurray Formation has been previously sub-divided into three units: the fluvial dominated lower McMurray, the fluvio-estuarine middle McMurray and the marine dominated upper McMurray. We notably demonstrate, on the base of size and amplitude of IHS, that the middle McMurray may be sub-divided into stratigraphic sub-units.We also point out the significance of oxidized surfaces overlain by abrupt grain size changes. Such surfaces are important clue for sequential analysis and may have a regional extent. They should be taken into account as a potential accurate correlative tool for the McMurray Formation.IntroductionSince few years, the oil industry shows a renewed interest, driven by technological improvement and high oil prizes, concerning heavy oil reservoirs. In north-eastern Alberta (Canada), the lower Cretaceous MacMurray Formation is the main reservoir unit of the Athabasca bitumen oil sand region (Fig.1). The paleogeography of the study area is characterized by a complex network of paleovalleys or major paleochannels that converges toward a main paleotalweg, the MacMurray paleovalley. This major fairway displays many reservoirs which is the main target for the oil sand industry in Alberta. However, because of important lateral and vertical facies changes and of a lack of well defined reliable regional stratigraphic surfaces, optimized exploitation of these heterogeneous reservoirs using SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) and aerial mining technologies remains challenging. In order to be more predictable, especially using subsurface data, it is essential to characterized sedimentary systems and to evaluate their spatial and temporal distribution. In the Fort MacMurray surroundings (Fig.1), high resolution sedimentological section measurements, both on outcrops and cores, allow us to propose an overview of lower cretaceous facies encountered within this fluvio-estuarine setting. The analysis of sedimentary facies permits to characterize local depositional environments and associated sedimentary processes. A stratigraphic analysis led to recognize the spatial and temporal distribution of these depositional environments. We propose a stratigraphic framework for the McMurray Formation that aims to facilitate correlations across the area with the scope to better constrain reservoir heterogeneities. Keywords: complex reservoir, lower cretaceous bituminous sandstone, Reservoir Characterization, structural geology, oil sand, Upstream Oil & Gas, depositional environment, bitumen, McMurray Formation, sedimentary system Subjects: Reservoir Characterization, Unconventional and Complex Reservoirs, Exploration, development, structural geology, Oil sand, oil shale, bitumen This content is only available via PDF. 2006. Society of Petroleum Engineers You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".