Monitoring of large-scale CO2 injection using CSEM, gravimetric, and
seismic AVO data
Abstract
A sequential inversion methodology for combining geophysical data types
of different resolutions is developed and applied to monitoring of
large-scale CO2 injection. The methodology is a two-step approach within
the Bayesian framework where lower resolution data are inverted first,
and subsequently used in the generation of the prior model for inversion
of the higher resolution data. For the application of CO2 monitoring,
the first step is done with either controlled-source electromagnetic
(CSEM) or gravimetric data, while the second step is done with seismic
amplitude-versus-offset (AVO) data. The Bayesian inverse problems are
solved by sampling the posterior probability distributions using either
the ensemble Kalman filter or ensemble smoother with multiple data
assimilation. A carefully designed parameterization is used to represent
the unknown geophysical parameters: electric conductivity, density, and
seismic velocity. The parameterization is well suited for identification
of CO2 plume location and variation of geophysical parameters within the
regions corresponding to inside and outside of the plume. The inversion
methodology is applied to a synthetic monitoring test case where
geophysical data are made from fluid-flow simulation of large-scale CO2
sequestration in the Skade formation in the North Sea. The numerical
experiments show that seismic AVO inversion results are improved with
the sequential inversion methodology using prior information from either
CSEM or gravimetric inversion.