Multi-physical Detection of Along-fault CO2 Migration through cap rock shales

On Svalbard, the UNIS CO2 Lab (http://co2-ccs.unis.no/) operates the Longyearbyen CO2 Lab, a pilot-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) research & development (R&D) programme. Several boreholes penetrate the targeted reservoir and top seal (i.e., cap rock), and extensive characterisation of the geological units that crop out near Deltaneset remains on-going. The multi-discipline, multi-nation collaboration powering the DACOOM project aims to supplement current findings by investigating the detection limit of fluid migration, a potentially catastrophic consequence in the event of a post-injection collapse of the seal. Based on to-be-acquired field data, novel geophysical models are generated that are used to assess the geophysical responses to along-fault fluid migration and to predict changes in reservoir conditions. The Konusdalen West outcrops provides a suitable locality for direct sampling of faulted cap rock units, while the (flat) topography makes the outcrops favourable to such geophysical methods as electrical resistivity tomography (ERT, resistivity) and ground penetrating radar (GPR, similar to seismic). Both techniques have been proven to be cost- and time-effective, and have been applied in Svalbard and elsewhere to detect spatial and structural heterogeneities.