Towards automated early detection of risks for a CO2 plume containment
from permanent seismic monitoring data
Abstract
Permanent reservoir surveillance is an invaluable monitoring tool for
CO2 storage projects, as it tracks spatial-temporal evolution of the gas
plume. The frequent images of CO2 plumes will facilitate
history-matching of the reservoir simulations and increase confidence of
early leakage detection. However, continuous data acquisition and
real-time interpretation require a new approach to data analysis. Here
we propose a data-driven approach to forecasting future time-lapse
seismic images based on the observed past images and test this approach
on the Otway Stage 2C data. The core component of the predictor is a
convolutional neural network, which considers subsequent plume maps as
colour layers, similarly to standard red-green-blue blending. Based on
the spatial distribution of these ‘colours’ we may predict the future
contour of the seismically visible part of the plume. The neural
networks absorb the physics of CO2 migration through training on
reservoir simulations for a wide range of injection scenarios and
subsurface models. Extensive testing shows that realistic plumes for
Stage 2C are too complicated and the neural network should be
pre-trained on simpler reservoir simulations that include only one or
two geological features, such as: faults, spill-points. Such staged
training enables a gradual descent of the neural network optimization to
a global minimum. In an upshot, the proposed algorithms are proven
accurate. The approach is practical, because each CO2 storage project
requires extensive pre-injection reservoir simulations. Once the
predictor has been trained, it forecasts plume evolution almost
instantly and quickly adapts to changing dynamics of the CO2 migration.