Full Waveform Tomography for Time-Lapse Monitoring

Oil and gas resources are hidden deep within the earth in geological structures which form reservoirs for these fluids. Finding these reservoirs, and monitoring the flow of fluids within these structures requires advanced imaging technologies and algorithms for the successful recovery of these valuable resources. This project will develop a newly proposed mathematical approach to imaging these structures, known as full wavefield tomography (Brenders and Pratt, 2007). The mathematics will be refined and implemented as a set of software tools, and tested with real exploration data from our industrial partner. These methods will then be applied to the problem of time-lapse seismic imaging, which allows for the real-time monitoring of changes within a petroleum reservoir over the weeks and months as fluids are extracted from the reservoir.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Gary Margrave

Student:

Chad Hogan

Partner:

Husky Energy Ltd.

Discipline:

Geography / Geology / Earth science

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

University of Calgary