Microseismic Monitoring of CO2 Injection at the Penn West Enhanced Oil Recovery Pilot Project, Canada: Implications for Detection of Wellbore Leakage

Sensors

Patricia Martínez-Garzón¹  Marco Bohnhoff¹  Grzegorz Kwiatek¹  Gonzalo Zambrano-Narvพz² 

[1] Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Section 3.2 Geomechanics and Rheology, Telegrafenberg, Potsdam 14473, Germany; E-Mails:;Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2W2, Canada; E-Mails:

关键词: CO₂ injection;    passive seismic monitoring;    induced seismicity;    leakage;    continuous seismic recordings;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s130911522

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A passive seismic monitoring campaign was carried out in the frame of a CO₂-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) pilot project in Alberta, Canada. Our analysis focuses on a two-week period during which prominent downhole pressure fluctuations in the reservoir were accompanied by a leakage of CO₂ and CH₄ along the monitoring well equipped with an array of short-period borehole geophones. We applied state of the art seismological processing schemes to the continuous seismic waveform recordings. During the analyzed time period we did not find evidence of induced micro-seismicity associated with CO₂ injection. Instead, we identified signals related to the leakage of CO₂ and CH₄, in that seven out of the eight geophones show a clearly elevated noise level framing the onset time of leakage along the monitoring well. Our results confirm that micro-seismic monitoring of reservoir treatment can contribute towards improved reservoir monitoring and leakage detection.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.