Surface-deformation measurements have been used for years in oil fields to monitor production, waterflooding, waste injection, steam flooding, and cyclic steam stimulation (CSS). They have been proved to be a very effective way to monitor field operations and save money for operators wishing to avoid unwanted surface breaches, casing failures, and excessive subsidence because of production. This paper demonstrates that more information can be extracted from surface-deformation measurements by inverting the surface deformation for the volumetric deformation at the reservoir level using the inversion techniques from the literature, so that the areal distribution of volumetric deformation can be identified. This leads to a better understanding of reservoir behavior and also provides additional data for integration into coupled reservoir simulation modeling. This paper shows the results of mapped reservoir volume changes from two cyclic steam injection projects using tiltmeter-based surface deformation measurements.
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