Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Geophysics (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Advisor 1

Wayne D. Pennington

Advisor 2

Roohollah Askari

Committee Member 1

Roger M. Turpening

Abstract

CO2 sequestration involves storing CO2 in a deep geological formation and may help to mitigate the increasing emission of carbon. To monitor the migration of injected fluid in the reservoir, seismic observations may be used to observe changes in reflection character. Conventional methods to image the subsurface, using active seismic measurements, with man-made sources, have been applied at a few test sites, and the use of passive measurements, with natural sources, has been considered as a probable cost-efficient method to monitor CO2 migration and leakage. This numerical modeling study examines the use of seismic interferometry to retrieve weak seismic reflections from background noise, a form of passive monitoring.

The factors that influence the quality of the retrieved reflections from interferometry include geophone interval, geophone depth, and effect of shallow noise sources, assuming we seek reflections from deep noise sources, representing either teleseismic events or local events as expected in a field of active injection. Using model data, geophone interval had no significant effect on the reflection quality, but buried geophones produce ghost reflections, suggesting that shallow geophones might be optimal. Shallow noise sources produce a destructive effect on the reflections from deeper noise sources and damage the resulting image.

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