Holistic Seismic Monitoring of CCS with Active and Passive Data: A
synthetic feasibility study based on Pelican site, Australia
Abstract
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is forecast to play a significant role
towards CO2 emissions reduction. Cost-effective and simplified
monitoring will be essential for rapid adoption and growth of CCS.
Seismic imaging methods are regularly utilized to monitor low-velocity
anomalies generated by injection of CO2 in the subsurface. In this study
we generate active and passive synthetic seismic datasets at different
stages of CO2 injection in the subsurface based on geologically
constrained subsurface models of the Pelican storage site in the
Gippsland Basin, Australia. We apply full waveform inversion (FWI) and
wave-equation dispersion (WD) inversion to seafloor deployed distributed
acoustic sensing (DAS) data to reconstruct the low-velocity anomalies.
We model both strain (DAS) and displacement datasets for the active data
component of the study and show that they
result in similar reconstruction of the CO2 anomaly. FWI based
time-lapse imaging of active data yields the most accurate results.
However, this approach is expensive and also suffers from complex issues
because of the near-onshore location of the storage site. Alternatively
inverting passive data results in only minor differences, but can still
effectively monitor changes in the subsurface, and assist in monitoring
the CO2 plume at the reservoir depth. Furthermore, we demonstrate the
capability of WD for inverting Scholte-waves derived from ambient noise
for shallow detection of CO2 in the unlikely event of a leakage.
Therefore, we propose a mixed mode monitoring strategy where passive
data is utilised for routine monitoring while active surveys are
deployed only when further investigation is required.