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Our RADARSAT 2 InSAR monitoring of four SAGD oil sands sites show high correlation of surface deformation and steam injection. Surface heave is about 2 cm/year in the SAGD sites investigated and is not influenced by the overburden thickness above the productive McMurray Formation.

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.

The research objectives of the Aquistore CO 2 storage project are to design, adapt, and test non-seismic monitoring methods for measurement, and verification of CO 2 storage, and to integrate data to determine subsurface fluid distributions, pressure changes and associated surface deformation. The test area is located west of the Boundary Dam Power Station in southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada. The targeted CO 2 injection zones are within the Winnipeg and Deadwood formations located at > 3000 m depth. An array of monitoring technique has been employed in the study area including advanced satellite Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) technique as Multidimensional Small Baseline Subset (MSBAS), GPS, tiltmeters and piezometers. DInSAR-MSBAS results were calculated based on over one hundred RADARSAT-2 images from five different beams obtained during 20120612-20140209. DInSAR-MSBAS results indicate slow ground deformation up to 1 cm/year not related to CO 2 injection but caused by different natural and anthropogenic causes.