Impact of Petrophysical Experiments on Quantitative Interpretation of 4D Seismic Data at Ketzin, Germany

Abstract:

Petrophysical investigations for CCS concern relationships between physical properties of rocks and geophysical observations for understanding behavior of injected CO2 in a geological formation. In turn 4D seismic surveying is a proven tool for CO2 monitoring. At the Ketzin pilot site (Germany) 4D seismic data have been acquired by means of a baseline (pre-injection) survey in 2005 and monitor surveys in 2009 and 2012. At Ketzin CO2 was injected in supercritical state from 2008 to 2013 in a sandstone saline aquifer (Stuttgart Formation) at a depth of about 650 m. The 4D seismic data from Ketzin reflected a pronounced effect of this injection. Seismic forward modeling using results of petrophysical experiments on two core samples fromthe target reservoir confirmed that effects of the injected CO2 on the 4D seismic data are significant. The petrophysical data were used in that modeling in order to reflect changes due to the CO2 injection in acoustic parameters of the reservoir. These petrophysical data were further used for a successful quantitative interpretation of the 4D seismic data at Ketzin. Now logs from a well (drilled in 2012) penetrating the reservoir containing information about changes in the acoustic parameters of the reservoir due to the CO2 injection are available. These logs were used to estimate impact of the petrophysical data on the qualitative and quantitative interpretation of the 4D seismic data at Ketzin. New synthetic seismograms were computed using the same software and the same wavelet as the old ones apart from the only difference and namely the changes in the input acoustic parameters would not be affected with any petrophysical experiments anymore. Now these changes were put in computing directly from the logs. In turn the new modelled changes due to the injection in the newly computed seismograms do not include any effects of the petrophysical data anymore. Key steps of the quantitative and qualitative interpretation of the 4D seismic data at the Ketzin pilot site were repeated with these new seismograms. Now the impact of the petrophysical data on the qualitative and quantitative interpretation of the 4D seismic data at Ketzin can be estimated.