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Arts, R. J., M. Trani, R. A. Chadwick, O. Eiken, S. Dortland, and L. G. H. van der Meer, 2009, Acoustic and elastic modeling of seismic time-lapse data from the Sleipner CO2 storage operation, in M. Grobe, J. C. Pashin, and R. L. Dodge, eds., Carbon dioxide sequestration in geological media—State of the science: AAPG Studies in Geology 59, p. 391403.

DOI:10.1306/13171251St593387

Copyright copy2009 by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Acoustic and Elastic Modeling of Seismic Time-Lapse Data from the Sleipner CO2 Storage Operation

R. J. Arts1, M. Trani2, R. A. Chadwick3, O. Eiken4, S. Dortland5, L. G. H. van der Meer6

1Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands; Present address: TNO, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
3British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, United Kingdom
4Statoil, Trondheim, Norway
5TNO, Utrecht, The Netherlands
6TNO, Utrecht, The Netherlands

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the Saline Aquifer CO2 Storage (SACS) and CO2STORE consortia for the permission to publish this work and also the operators of the Sleipner license, Statoil, ExxonMobil, Norsk Hydro, and Total for their cooperation. The permission to publish is given by the Executive Director, British Geological Survey (Natural Environment Research Council). The SACS and CO2STORE are funded by the European Union Thermie Program by industry partners Statoil, BP, ExxonMobil, Norsk Hydro, Total, and Vattenfall, and by national governments, including the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry. RampD partners are Bundesanstalt fur Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), British Geological Survey (BGS), Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres (BRGM), Geological Survey of Denmark (GEUS), Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP), Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience, National Geological Survey (TNO), Schlumberger, and SINTEF Petroleum Research. We also acknowledge the European Union–funded Network of Excellence CO2GEONET for their financial support that made the additional synthetic seismic modeling possible.

ABSTRACT

Carbon dioxide has been injected into the Utsira sand at Sleipner since 1996, with more than 8 mmt currently in the reservoir. Seismic monitoring surveys to follow the migration of the CO2 in the reservoir have been conducted in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2006. The CO2 plume is imaged on the seismic data as a prominent multitier feature, comprising several bright subhorizontal reflections, growing with time and interpreted as arising from as many as nine discrete layers of high-saturation CO2, each up to a few meters thick. A quantitative seismic interpretation of the time-lapse data has included synthetic seismic modeling to derive CO2 distributions in the reservoir. Convolution-based modeling has shown that seismic reflection amplitudes are broadly related to layer thickness via a tuning relationship. However, acquisition geometry, lateral velocity changes, mode conversions, and intrinsic attenuation are all likely to affect amplitudes and need to be incorporated within a rigorous quantitative analysis. A first attempt to incorporate some of these effects, through more realistic prestack elastic modeling and processing, is presented here. Both the acquisition geometry and the processing sequence of the synthetic data are comparable to the real field data. Results support the basic amplitude-thickness relationship but with some important additional effects.

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