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Three-Dimensional Modeling of the Casing Effect in Onshore Controlled-Source Electromagnetic Surveys

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Abstract

The presence of steel-cased wells and other infrastructure causes a significant change in the electromagnetic fields that has to be taken into consideration in modeling and interpretation of field data. A realistic and accurate simulation requires the borehole casing to be incorporated into the modeling scheme, which is numerically challenging. Due to the huge conductivity contrast between the casing and surrounding media, a spatial discretization that provides accurate results at different spatial scales ranging from millimeters to hundreds of meters is required. In this paper, we present a full 3D frequency-domain electromagnetic modeling based on a parallel finite-difference algorithm considering the casing effect and investigate its applicability on the borehole-to-surface configuration of the Hontomín CO2 storage site. To guarantee a robust solution of linear systems with highly ill-conditioned matrices caused by huge conductivity contrasts and multiple spatial scales in the model, we employ direct sparse solvers. Different scenarios are simulated in order to study the influence of the source position, conductivity model, and the effect of the steel casing on the measured data. Several approximations of the real hollow casing that allow for a large reduction in the number of elements in the resulting meshes are studied. A good agreement between the modeled responses and the real field data demonstrates the feasibility of simulating casing effects in complex geological areas. The steel casing of the well greatly increases the amplitude of the surface electromagnetic fields and thus improves the signal-to-noise ratio and the sensitivity to deep targets.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Michael J. Rycroft, Colin Farquharson and one anonymous reviewer for their suggestions that helped to improve the presentation of this paper. This work was supported by computational resources provided by the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre with funding from the Australian Government and the Government of Western Australia. The authors would like to acknowledge the PARDISO developers for providing an academic license. The first author also acknowledges support from the RISE Horizon 2020 European Project GEAGAM (644202). EV, PQ, JL and AM thank Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and EU Feder Funds through grant CGL2014-54118-C2-1-R. Funding for this Project has been partially provided by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, through the CIUDEN-Fundació Bosch i Gimpera agreement (ALM-09-010) Development and Adaptation of Electromagnetic techniques: control and monitoring of storage sites and in collaboration with the French EM-Hontomin ANR project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Geology, Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Perth, WA, 6102, Australia

    Vladimir Puzyrev

  2. GEOMODELS Research Institute, Departament Dinamica de la Terra i de l’Ocea, Facultat de Geologia, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Marti i Franques s/n, Barcelona, 08028, Spain

    Eloi Vilamajo, Pilar Queralt, Juanjo Ledo & Alex Marcuello

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  1. Vladimir Puzyrev
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Correspondence to Vladimir Puzyrev.

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Puzyrev, V., Vilamajo, E., Queralt, P. et al. Three-Dimensional Modeling of the Casing Effect in Onshore Controlled-Source Electromagnetic Surveys. Surv Geophys 38, 527–545 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9397-8

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