title: Microseismic monitoring of CO2 injection at the Penn West Enhanced Oil Recovery pilot project, Canada: implications for detection of wellbore leakage.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Section 3.2 Geomechanics and Rheology, Telegrafenberg, Potsdam 14473, Germany. patricia@gfz-potsdam.de.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Martínez-Garzón
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bohnhoff
authors.forename: Grzegorz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kwiatek
authors.forename: Gonzalo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zambrano-Narváez
authors.forename: Rick
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chalaturnyk
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005648:Fuel Oils / Q000032:analysis*; D005844:Geology / Q000379:methods*; D009991:Oscillometry / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D010865:Pilot Projects; D014732:Vibration; D014881:Water Supply / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D005648:Fuel Oils; D002245:Carbon Dioxide