Geophysical Monitoring of Multiple Phase Saturation of Rocks: Application to CO[subscript 2] Sequestration

Abstract

4-D seismic techniques rely on measuring changes in velocity over time in order to detect changes during activities such as CO[subscript 2] flooding and storage in a reservoir. Wang et al. [1998] detail a laboratory study of the seismic detectability of CO[subscript 2] flooding in a series of carbonate reservoir rocks taken from the McElroy field, West Texas. The basic findings of the paper suggest that while “ . . . laboratory results show that the largest V[subscript P] and V[subscript S] changes caused by CO[subscript 2] injection are associated with high-porosity, high-permeability rocks, . . . ” velocity changes in low-porosity (< 10%) and low-permeability carbonates are less than 1% and are undetectable using traditional 4-D seismic techniques.