SEAM Update: SEAM CO2 project: Evaluating geophysical methods for characterization of CO2 injections

An essential need for carbon sequestration is to have benchmarks that can be used to measure the geophysical responses to CO2 injections to evaluate different monitoring approaches. The primary purpose of the SEG Advanced Modeling Corporation (SEAM) CO2 project is to build realistic geologic models and to conduct simulations that provide data that can be used to test geophysical tools without field experimentation. A necessary requirement to meet our goals is to test the efficiency and accuracy of the various needed simulation and processing systems (geology, reservoir, geomechanics, geophysics) and the sharing of information among them. The approach of the SEAM CO2 project has been to develop realistic geologic models representing locations where CO2 sequestration may take place, perform reservoir and combined reservoir/geomechanical simulation of CO2 injection into the model to infer the response of the model to injection, define geophysical properties of a baseline and one or more monitor models based on state-of-the-art rock physics relations, simulate the geophysical response of the model, and finally process the geophysical data to evaluate the value of information of various methods for characterization of the CO2 locations and volumes within the subsurface.