CSS and Geothermal

The green future

VSP can be applied to geothermal exploration and CSS storage application through the calibration and refinement of surface seismic in order to better constrain the subsurface model. VSP assists in providing calibration parameters such as identification of seismic reflectors, defining reflector dip, adjusting reflection coefficients, and improved knowledge of appropriate seismic data processing inputs such as deconvolution operators and amplitude decay functions.
Also, VSP has been applied to geothermal wells to determine fracture content, fracture orientation and fracture spacing.
Accurate and automated locations of microseismic events are desirable for many seismological and industrial applications. In CSS it could provide a measurement of fluid movement and also act as an early warning system for pressure/fluid buildup towards the cap rock and thereof the cap rock integrity. Micro-seismic activities in geothermal areas could indicate stress release.
Understanding the factors triggering micro seismicity associated with water injection in geothermal processes is essential to ensuring effective steam production where evolving micro seismicity near the injection point could be explained by a diffusion process and/or water migration and that local micro seismicity on a remote fault was likely activated by stress fluctuations resulting from changes in the injection rate.