Ground deformation due to steam assisted gravity drainage and cyclic steam stimulation observed by RADARSAT-2 in Alberta´s oil sands

Ground deformation in Alberta´s oil sand in Canada was observed with RADARSAT-2 Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR). Canadian RADARSAT-2 satellite is capable of acquiring SAR data with 24 day repeat cycle with beams of various resolution, coverage and polarization. In this work we used data from various RADARSAT-2 beams acquired over the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) and the Cyclic Steam Simulation (CSS) enhanced oil recovery mining sites. We employed the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) technique for measuring linear deformation rates and time series of deformation when coherence of individual interferograms was favorable. In case of very fast deformation observed at some sites the accurate phase unwrapping for a large number of interferograms was impossible so for these sites we computed individual interferograms only. Presented here results demonstrate that CSS enhanced oil recovery method produces significantly larger ground deformation than SAGD method.