Assessing the capabilities of induced seismicity monitoring for CO₂ storage

Summary
The project will use the Groningen field with unique seismic instrumentation and strong occurrence of induced seismicity to investigate and develop methods for locating seismicity as well as network design for future large-scale offshore CO₂ storage.
The Groningen gas field is about the same size as a large-scale CO₂ storage. Induced micro-seismic now occurs with tremors up to magnitude M3.6, and the extent has been increasing over the last ten years.
Data from Groningen represent a unique opportunity to improve procedures for the detection of deformation / causes of microseismicity, especially for relatively complicated velocity models that are the case in Groningen and very similar in large parts of the Norwegian North Sea. An important part will be the identification and characterization of types of earthquakes, for example to categorize events within the reservoir and events outside, and possibly within the caprock.
The design of the network is a key task in the project, which is necessary to keep the costs of geophysical instrumentation of CO₂ storage low.

Goal
The project aims to establish qualified methods for real-time monitoring of CO₂ storages, early warning of potential leaks and increased understanding of pressure build-up in the reservoir. Using a large-scale geological model for the Groningen field, we develop routines for the necessary network configuration so that the detection limits for microseismic monitoring are sufficient. Modeling is validated with the help of real induced micro-seismic in the Groningen reservoir. As a result, we are creating a ‘best practice’ guide for field installation for large-scale storage in the North Sea, which is also linked to previous modeling results from the MIMOSA (In Salah, Algeria) project