State-of-the-Art of Monitoring Methods to evaluate Storage Site Performance

 
1. INTRODUCTION
 
2. MONITORING TECHNIQUES
 
3. MONITORING CONCEPTS – STATUS QUO
 
4. SETTING UP A SITE-SPECIFIC MONITORING PLAN
 
5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
 
6. REFERENCES
 
 
2.1 CO2 plume migration in the storage reservoir
 
2.2 Surface uplift
 
2.3 Induced seismicity and mechanical reaction of overburden
 
2.4 Faults
 
2.5 Abandoned wells
 
2.6 Overlying and adjacent aquifers
 
2.7 Freshwater aquifers
 
2.8 Near surface eco-compartments
 
 
2.1.1 Seismic reflection
 
2.1.2 Gravity
 
2.1.3 Geoelectrics and electromagnetics
 
2.1.4 Well Logging / Wireline Logging
 
» 2.1.5 Satellite interferometry and other techniques for surface movem...
 
 

2.1.5 Satellite interferometry and other techniques for surface movement detection

Monitoring of surface uplift can be used as an indirect method for mapping of the area affected by CO2 storage, which can also be interpreted as a form of approximate extension of the CO2 plume (McColpin, 2009). Limited, differential ground movements have been reported for recent CO2 storage projects like In Salah, Algeria and were successfully used to track the CO2 plume migration (e.g. Onuma and Ohkawa, 2009). A relatively wide range of very reliable, established geodetic techniques exist to monitor ground movements. Most of them rely on the periodically repeated surveillance of fixed ground control points. New methods based on remote sensing approaches are able to cover large areas in short time. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR, e.g. Ketelaar, 2009) and Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) are only two examples for a suite of remote sensing techniques which have already proven their suitability for many different other purposes. More details about these techniques are given in Section 2.2.

Monitoring results on ground surface movement represent invaluable input in coupled reservoir/geomechanical models that - through inverse modelling and the history-matching procedure - provide an improved insight into the real behaviour of the CO2 and the accompanying processes deep in the storage reservoir, occurring during the CO2 injection phase (e.g. Rutqvist et al., 2008; Rutqvist et al., 2010; Shi et al., 2012).