Estimating saturation and density changes caused by CO2 injection at Sleipner — Using time-lapse seismic amplitude-variation-with-offset and time-lapse gravity

Abstract

We have developed a calibrated, simple time-lapse seismic method for estimating saturation changes from the [Formula: see text]-storage project at Sleipner offshore Norway. This seismic method works well to map changes when [Formula: see text] is migrating laterally away from the injection point. However, it is challenging to detect changes occurring below [Formula: see text] layers that have already been charged by some [Formula: see text]. Not only is this partly caused by the seismic shadow effects, but also by the fact that the velocity sensitivity for [Formula: see text] change in saturation from 0.3 to 1.0 is significantly less than saturation changes from zero to 0.3. To circumvent the seismic shadow zone problem, we combine the time-lapse seismic method with time-lapse gravity measurements. This is done by a simple forward modeling of gravity changes based on the seismically derived saturation changes, letting these saturation changes be scaled by an arbitrary constant and then by minimizing the least-squares error to obtain the best fit between the scaled saturation changes and the measured time-lapse gravity data. In this way, we are able to exploit the complementary properties of time-lapse seismic and gravity data.