Steam-injection monitoring in South Oman—from single-pattern to field-scale surveillance

Abstract

Downhole seismic monitoring has become an alternative to more conventional surface seismic in cases where the latter has low signal-to-noise ratio or poor repeatability, or when frequent monitoring of a local target is required. Downhole 3D VSP monitoring has been applied to both onshore (O'Brien et al., 2004; Kiyashchenko et al., 2011) and offshore environments (Wu et al., 2011). In onshore environments, surface seismic repeatability often suffers from surface noise and near-surface variations caused by water-table changes or surface facilities construction. For VSP surveys, the wavefield separation into downgoing and upgoing fields presents an opportunity to discriminate between near-surface and reservoir changes, thus making time-lapse applications more effective.