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Passive Seismic Methods for Hydrocarbon Exploration

Article · May 2011

DOI: 10.3997/2214-4609.20149603

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Introduction

This overview lists several passive-seismic methods which can be utilized for the exploration of
hydrocarbons, especially when active-seismic methods break down or can not be used. These newly
developed methods may provide P-wave or S-wave velocity cubes, density information and even
seismic sections. But in most of the cases with a lower resolution than active shooting can provide.
Despite this, one of their advantages is their environmental friendliness, due to the fact that no sources
have to be deployed and in most cases no receiver lines have to be cut through the landscape. This
also reduces the costs dramatically, making passive surveys one of the cheapest geophysical methods
available.

Most geophysicists relate passive seismic only to increased oil-recovery. Of cause this is not at all a
passive method, only because one does not use an ordinary source like a vibrator or explosives. In
“passive seismic” reservoir monitoring one tries to detect micro-seismicity, caused by the opening or
closing of small fractures in the reservoir rock. But these sources are caused by human intervention
like drainage, water injection, SAGD or fracturing jobs.

Only recently, purely passive methods have emerged for hydrocarbon exploration and this almost
simultaneously. Several of the new methods were adapted from the low resolution methods developed
by global seismologists, to a sufficiently high resolution for the search for giant or larger hydrocarbon
accumulations. Two relatively quick methods using only the recorded amplitude value, of which one
is a proposed direct hydrocarbon-indicator, will complete the list of methods.

All of the methods use either

 Natural seismicity: Local Earthquake Tomography (LET) and Daylight Imaging (DLI)
 Ocean waves: Sea-Floor Compliance (SFC)
 Microseism surface waves: Ambient Noise Tomography (ANT), Low-Frequency
Spectroscopy (LFS) and Surface-Wave Amplitudes (SWA).

The resolution of the passive seismic methods is generally comparable to gravimetric or methods or
refraction seismic measurements but will almost never be of such high resolution as active seismic. So
why should we use passive seismic at all then? Here are some of the possible reasons:

 Where one is not allowed to “shoot” active seismic, for example natural reservations or
whales in the vicinity.
 Where one is not allowed to make access for vibro-trucks or geophone lines, like protected
jungles.
 Where the terrain does not allow a proper azimuthal sampling, resulting in shadow zones for
active seismic. This could be for example mountainous regions where only limited tracks
allow access for vibro-trucks or drilling equipment.
 Where it is impossible or too expensive to run streamer seismics due to closing sea-ice or too
shallow water depths.
 Where a huge area has to be explored to determine the underlying geology or to limit future
3D surveys.
 Where the active seismic data has uncertainties as for sub-salt or sub-basalt areas.
 Where low-frequency content may help in a “full-waveform” inversion.

One can see from the above list that another important benefit of all passive seismic methods is their
environmental friendliness. On land and in shallow water there will be no trace left after most of the
mentioned surveys and even in a deep-water setting fast-eroding concrete slabs or sand bags can be
used as anchors to hold the recording equipment on the seabed. There is no need for airguns, vibro-
trucks or explosives. Therefore, no trace of a survey will be left and legal permits may be avoided.

Third Passive Seismic Workshop – Actively Passive!

27-30 March 2011, Athens, Greece
The recording time necessary to reach a sufficient resolution is highly dependent on the used method
and can vary from a few hours (SWA) to several months in the case of low regional seismicity (LET).
In all cases a longer recording of the passive signals will decrease uncertainties and increase the
resolution. Further down I propose several ideas how to integrate passive-seismic methods with each
other and with an active-seismic survey.

Passive Seismic Methods

The following list sums up the most important passive-seismic methods for hydrocarbon exploration.
Please make use of the references and the citations within them for more detailed information and
further reading.

Ambient Noise Tomography

Ambient Noise Tomography (ANT) uses the

surface waves of microseisms to determine the
structure and the S-wave velocities of the sub-
surface (Levshin et al., 1989). To penetrate down
to several kilometres surface waves with
frequencies well below 1 Hz have to be recorded
with broadband seismometers (Bensen et al.,
2008a, 2008b). The lateral resolution in several
kilometre depths may reach a few hundred
meters (Bussat & Kugler, 2009). ANT can be
used to scan regions environmentally friendly for locating 3D seismic targets or to produce an S-wave
velocity cube where active seismic can not be used or is limited.

Daylight Imaging

Daylight Imaging (DLI) is using the local

seismicity of the area to construct reflection
seismic gathers, like one would record in an
active seismic survey (Claerbout, 1968). As in
active reflection seismics hundreds of geophones
have to be deployed and a regularly spaced 2D
line setup is sufficient (Hohl & Mateeva, 2006;
Draganov et al., 2009). The recording length is strongly dependent on the seismicity of the area,
receiver sensitivity and geologic complexity. DLI may help where shot positions are limited and
illumination of the subsurface is a problem.

Local Earthquake Tomography

Local earthquake tomography (LET) on the reservoir scale (Kapotas et al., 2003) uses the local
seismicity of the region like Daylight Imaging (DLI). But instead of cross-correlating the recorded
signals, each earthquake incident is analysed on multiple receivers and a ray path is calculated
revealing the velocity structure of the subsurface in 3D. This method will most likely use more time to
record than any of the other methods.

Sea-Floor Compliance

As the title indicates, SFC is a pure offshore method which can only be applied in deep waters of
several hundred meters. Ocean-Bottom Seismometer OBS stations need to be equipped with
highly-sensitive broadband seismometers and additional absolute or differential pressure gauges.
Using the vertical movement of the seabed, caused by large passing ocean-waves and measured via
water pressure, the method can provide a coarse 1D S-wave velocity model of the subsurface down to

Third Passive Seismic Workshop – Actively Passive!

27-30 March 2011, Athens, Greece
Moho in an adequate setting (Crawford & Singh, 2008)). This analysis is a by-product while
performing any of the other survey types in an offshore setting.

Surface-Wave Amplitudes

SWA is a 1D method using sensitive seismometers and it evolved out of our study of a Low-
Frequency Spectroscopy survey. The analysis of a passive dataset involves no geophysical processing
and still manages to image the geological structure of the sub-surface. The cause of this effect is most
likely the scattering of incoming surface-waves from microseisms at vertical discontinuities and the
transformation into body waves. A quite similar method was used by Gorbatikov et al., 2008.

Low-Frequency Spectroscopy

Low-Frequency Spectroscopy (LFS) also known as HyMAS suggests that one can measure a 2-3 Hz
direct hydrocarbon-indicator signal over a hydrocarbon reservoir using a broadband seismometer
(Saenger et al., 2009). The proposed mechanism explains the recorded signal with hydrocarbon
droplets being in the state of resonance in water-wet pores due to the continuous energy input by
natural surface-waves. Several independent authors can not confirm this method in the field (Ali et al.,
2007) or theoretically (Broadhead, 2010). Hanssen & Bussat, 2008, show that in their case the signal
is caused by artificial noise locally produced by human activity.

Integration

All described methods can easily be combined, resulting in one survey setup, which allows for
multiple processing methods to be applied to one dataset. These specific results can than be analysed
in a joint inversion or iteratively, resulting in further costs reduction of one of the cheapest
geophysical survey methods available.

Most of the methods can be jointly inverted with active seismic data, when available, and it is also
possible to record reflections and refractions during an active-seismic survey. All of the methods are
either mainly or additionally sensitive to S-wave velocities, giving more insight into the lithology and
fluid content of the rocks. Therefore, it can also benefit static corrections, history matching,
anisotropic imaging, stress detection and fracture direction. LET and DLI are firstly P-wave imaging
methods, where SC and ANT are almost pure S-wave methods, but also sensitive to densities, which
may be integrated directly with gravimetric measurements.

To integrate the passive seismic methods within an active seismic survey additional instrumentation
has to be deployed in most cases next to the reflection seismic equipment. To take advantage of the
low-frequency information one would have to measure down to approximately 0.05 Hz for ANT, but
also up to at least 100 Hz mainly for the reflection data. Additionally, the receivers should be
seismometers or boosted geophones, because standard geophones are not sensitive enough for most of
the methods. Furthermore, due to the higher sensitivity the recording time can be reduced and may
reach durations as short as receiver line deployments for active seismic.

Conclusions

In my view the most promising low-frequency methods are Ambient Noise Tomography and Daylight
Imaging, the first for producing an S-wave velocity cube and the latter for constructing reflection
seismic profiles. Most of the other methods, like Surface-Wave Amplitude and Seabed Compliance,
can be analysed with the data recorded from the main methods. Local Earthquake Tomography might
be used in combination too, but needs by far the longest recording duration.

Passive seismic can add value to an active seismic survey, for example supplying a background
velocity model or helping with near-surface statics. They might be used where active seismic is not
possible or yields unsatisfactory results, like natural reservations, high mountains or shallow waters.

Third Passive Seismic Workshop – Actively Passive!

27-30 March 2011, Athens, Greece
 All methods can be combined, resulting in one survey, one dataset, and several results. These can then
be analysed in an integrated way, perhaps even with available gravity data. But it is perfectly logic
that all these seismic methods will most likely be best integrated or jointly inverted with active
seismic reflection data. Together, not only the bandwidth is increased, but also the resolution.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all included researchers for their work and effort, and my colleagues Sascha Bussat and
Simone Kugler for their analysis included here.

References

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experiment over a carbonate reservoir in Abu Dhabi, First Break 25, 71-73.
Bensen, G.D., Ritzwoller, M.H., and Shapiro, N.M., 2008a, Broad-band ambient noise surface wave
tomography across the United States, J. Geophys. Res., 113, B05306.
Bensen, G.D., Ritzwoller, M.H., Barmin, M.P., Levshin, A.L., Lin, F., Moschetti, M.P., Shapiro,
N.M., and Yang, Y., 2008b, Processing seismic ambient noise data to obtain reliable broad-band
surface wave dispersion measurements, Geophys. J. Int., 169, 1239-1260.
Bussat, S., and Kugler, S., 2009, Recording noise - Estimating shear-wave velocities: Feasibility of
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Third Passive Seismic Workshop – Actively Passive!

27-30 March 2011, Athens, Greece

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