Description

Geophysical monitoring plays a crucial role in effective reservoir management for many fields, often leading to enhanced hydrocarbon recovery and operational efficiency. Valuable insights into dynamic reservoir and overburden processes can be obtained through time-lapse (4D) seismic, gravimetry and electromagnetic surveys, which detect physical changes in the inter-well region resulting from engineering activities. 

This information can help multidisciplinary teams map the distribution of injected fluids, design in-fill wells and build more predictive simulation models. Monitoring of carbonates is typically far more challenging than other reservoirs such as clastics however, with the stiffer rock frames believed to exhibit lower sensitivity to changes in fluid saturation, pressure and temperature. Onshore and offshore, advances in acquisition and processing over the past 10 years have driven down non-repeatability noise, and resulted in some successful case-studies, proving that surveillance of hard-rock carbonates is possible. In the case of land reservoirs however, variability in the near-surface over time significantly degrades repeatability, and still makes monitoring of such fields challenging. 

The objective of this workshop is to discuss the current status of geophysical monitoring for hard rock carbonate reservoirs and the advances required to make the technology viable for widespread use. This will require a better understanding of carbonate rock physics, innovations in data acquisition and processing, integration of different datasets along with the development of software platforms to better facilitate multidisciplinary communication. With more than half of the world’s remaining oil and gas located in carbonate fields, this represents a major opportunity to significantly impact future energy supply.