Monitoring of CO 2 Injected into Deep Saline Aquifer for Geologic Storage Projects

Abstract

Monitoring has been identified as one of the highest priority needs to provide safe and secure storage of CO 2. Monitoring of CO 2 plays several diverse and critical roles in the development and acceptance of geologic storage. To ensure the safety of storage projects by demonstrating that CO 2 is retained in the formation, it is necessary to verify the mass of CO 2 that has been stored in the subsurface. It is also necessary for monitoring sweep efficiency and determining whether the available storage capacity is being used effectively. This paper provides information on monitoring technologies (including 3D seismic, VSP, well logging, and surface monitoring of rates and compositions of natural and introduced chemical tracers) that can serve all these purpose, by both drawing from relevant experience across a number of monitoring applications and presenting the results of original research on this topic.