In 1984, Professor Amos Nur of Stanford University presented a paper at the SEG Annual International Meeting in which he reported results from work carried out by his group to measure compressional and shear wave velocities, as well as attenuation, in samples of heavy oil sands from several reservoirs. Although the explanation for the observed effect was not clear, the results suggested that acoustic velocities and attenuation in sands saturated with heavy oils are strongly dependent on the degree of heating of the sample. To many who heard that presentation, it was apparent that these observations might provide the basis for applying geophysical technology to the problem of monitoring the progression of flood fronts in thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in heavy oil reservoirs. Since that time, a number of important projects have been carried out to test the theory and to attempt to verify the results predicted by the laboratory experiments. It is reasonable to say that results, to date, have been quite promising and that the interest in geophysical monitoring of EOR processes is growing steadily as new results and findings are being obtained.
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Justice et al. (1989) studied this question.