Curtin/CSIRO Geophysics Group Seminar, 21st September 2022
A rapid VSP acquisition with DAS in mineral exploration
Date: Wednesday, 21st September 2022
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: ARRC Auditorium, 26 Dick Perry Avenue, Kensington; Microsoft Teams
Presenter: Konstantin Tertyshnikov, Exploration Geophysics, Curtin University
Abstract: In the last decade distributed fibre optic acoustic and temperature sensing has become quite extensively utilised for various reservoir exploration and monitoring tasks. Specifically, it gained a lot of attention for downhole seismic applications due to distinct directional sensitivity of fibre optic sensors along a cable and in addition due to usual downhole acquisition geometry, where P-waves approaching receivers along a bore and a cable.
There are also standard means of cable deployments in wells: cementing behind the casing, on-tubing installations, and wireline type deployments. In the energy industry DAS currently serves in many on-shore and off-shore applications the deployment strategy varies depending on the purpose of sensing and often tend to be permanent for monitoring tasks (cemented, on-tubing) and retrievable for exploration (wireline type). Despite the popularity in the energy sector, a much slower uptake of the technology is seen in the mineral industry.
There are a number of reported successful trials of using DAS for downhole seismic in mineral exploration. Even though DAS provides more cost-effective solutions for many downhole seismic applications, for mineral exploration some deployment strategies (like cementing for deep wells) are still considered a high cost. Here we present the results of a trial of the fast deployment of fibre optics using the FibreLine Intervention (FLI) probe in a mineral borehole and demonstrate the downhole seismic acquisition results.
Biography: Dr Konstantin Tertyshnikov received a doctorate degree in geophysics from Curtin University (Western Australia) in 2014. Konstantin worked as a geophysicist and project leader on a number of geophysical exploration projects in Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. At the present time, Konstantin is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Exploration Geophysics at Curtin University. His main research focus is distributed acoustic sensing technologies, CO2 geosequestration, borehole seismic, mineral exploration and seismic acquisition.