Passive seismic interferometry imaging: An example from the Ketzin pilot CO2 geological storage site

Abstract

Ketzin is a well-known onshore CO2 geological storage test site. Injection started in June 2008 and ended in August 2013. About 67 kt of CO2 was injected into a saline aquifer reservoir. Numerous geophysical surveys have been conducted at the site, including passive seismic ones. Passive seismic interferometry can be applied in many seismic exploration investigations to image the underground structures. This study compares several passive seismic interferometry imaging methods to a data set acquired at Ketzin. The passive data set consist of 5 lines with 20 h of recordings in total. First, we apply the autocorrelation method to obtain zero offset stacked sections directly. Secondly, we test different interferometry methods to generate virtual shot gathers. These virtual shot gathers are then processed to obtain CDP stacked sections. Results from these methods are compared with an active data set recorded at the site. The processed passive sections have relatively less coherent reflections compared with the active stacked sections. However, the passive sections obtained by autocorrelation show good agreement with the active stacked sections. The stacked sections obtained by processing virtual shot gathers using crosscorrelation show similar features to the active stacked sections, but with poorer coherence in the reflections and are noisier than the autocorrelation sections.