To Image or Not to Image? Trigger Seismic CCS Surveillance

Across carbon capture and storage (CCS) conferences, cost reduction remains a central theme to enable deployment ‘at scale’. Monitoring, measurement, and verification (MMV) plans span the entire Life of Injection (LoI) and beyond, representing significant operational expenditure. Drawing from oil and gas heritage, pioneering CCS projects like Quest and Sleipner rely on image-based solutions (VSP, 4D seismic). While robust, these methods are costly and raise operational and societal concerns. Even if providing global insights about the subsurface and seismic images have proved efficient for oil and gas production optimisation, a question is raised regarding its adoption on CCS, where safety is the primary concern. To address the surveillance need of CCS, it is important to mention that the million dollar question here isn’t whether to image, but when. In our industry, ‘the value of full 4D is in the surprise’, but surprises are precisely what CCS operators want to avoid. Instead, we propose a seismic-focused monitoring method called spot seismic, which is model and data-driven. Lightweight and repeatable, this active seismic method has been successfully implemented onshore and offshore. Its goal is to provide timely evidence that the CO2 plume behaves as predicted, and to trigger alarms when significant anomalies arise. The spot seismic method, has been recognised in the Global CCS Institute’s state of the art: CCS Technologies 2025 report as a TRL 8–9 scalable and innovative approach for CCS surveillance. This predictive monitoring approach not only addresses CCS economics but also serves multiple stakeholders, aligning with regulatory frameworks and enabling transparent, risk-based decision-making.