Full waveform inversion in the time lapse mode applied to CO2 storage at Sleipner

Carbon capture and storage is a viable greenhouse gas mitigation technology and the Sleipner CO2 sequestration site in the North Sea is an excellent example. Storage of CO2 at the Sleipner site requires monitoring over large areas, which can successfully be accomplished with time lapse seismic imaging. One of the main goals of CO2 storage monitoring is to be able to estimate the volume of the stored CO2 in the reservoir. This requires a parametrization of the subsurface as exact as possible. Here we use elastic 2D time-domain full waveform inversion in a time lapse manner to obtain a P-wave velocity constrain directly in the depth domain for a base line survey in 1994 and two post-injection surveys in 1999 and 2006. By relating velocity change to free CO2 saturation, using a rock physics model, we find that at the considered location the aquifer may have been fully saturated in some places in 1999 and 2006.