DC3-PhD: New methodology of tracking underground injection from CO2 storage, geothermal and other types of underground injection

The main objectives are development and practical testing of seismic interferometry of alternative method for tracking injecting fluids in the underground and test this methodology on real data, establish its limitation and investigate optimal deployment including optimal deployment for shallow borehole receivers. 

Objectives: The main objectives are development and practical testing of seismic interferometry of alternative method for tracking injecting fluids in the underground. Currently we use passive seismic monitoring to detect induced seismicity and occasionally some projects use repeated active seismic (4D) surveys to track injected fluid in the underground reservoirs. Especially, CO2 sequestration seems to effectively show in 4D surveys the changes due to injected CO2. However, such surveys are expensive and difficult to do. Recent rapid development of seismic interferometry allows to obtain surface (and sometimes even body waves) response between monitoring stations. The goal of this thesis would be to investigate the feasibility of the fluid placement detection from inversion of the Green’s functions between receivers monitoring the reservoir and test this methodology on real data, establish its limitation and investigate optimal deployment including optimal deployment for shallow borehole receivers. Seismik has developed interferometric surface wave inversion software package which can be further enhanced for this project and has access to seismic monitoring dataset from Decatur project in Illinois (1Mt total over 3-year period). The investigation focus on both optimal network design (shallow borehole) and feasibility of interferometric monitoring.

Expected Results: Find optimal depth for shallow borehole receivers for microseismic monitoring. Find out strength of the S-wave velocity changes resulting from CO2 sequestration on surface waves. Determine limits on accuracy of the surface wave inversion to detect these changes. Do the previous step for both reservoir and caprock. Test on real dataset from Decatur project. Propose and model ideal monitoring network design to determine underground placement.

Doctoral candidate: Oleh Kalinichenko

Host Institution: Seismik (Czech Republic) 

Secondments: NTNU, CSIC