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We investigate porous rock storage facilities and artificially created caverns for good seal

FAULT SEAL ASSESSMENT

Faults play an essential role at many natural gas, CO2 and oil storage sites because they can act as conduits or barriers to fluid flow. 

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By means of Helium survey we investigate the existing and potential underground storage sites and faults within sites.  Actual Geology solves the most serious problem in the underground storage sites related to big risks on fault-seal integrity by identifying ​migration paths of wasted natural gas.

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Heliometric data helps to assess fault-seal integrity in two aspects - fault membrane seal and fault stability - by providing exact location and conditions of the fault that participated in gas migration process. Our basic helium survey report maps first-order and second-order faults.​

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Helium survey services applied for:

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Underground Gas and Oil Storages

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Underground gas (and oil) storages are widely employed for balancing the supply and demand of natural gas, mostly during cold winter periods. Actual Geology in cooperation with our sister company Novel Prospecting Ltd. offers a complete set of services to identify and build a precise model of gas flow from UGS/UOS.

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Underground Storages for CO2 emission gas

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Anthropogenic energy-related CO2 emissions increase with new fossil-fuel power plants, growing energy-intensive industries and development of new sources of fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered one of the key technologies needed to meet the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement and to achieve net zero emissions from the energy sector by 2050 (IPCC 2018IEA 2021). Actual Geology cooperates with CCS technology suppliers to promote technological approach for global emissions-reduction scenarios.

Helium Survey and Gas Monitoring Services

1. Determination of permeable zones and faults (gas leak zones) over underground storage facilities

 

  • Areal 3D Helium Survey is carried out over the operational UGS/UOS storage site.

  • A smaller step 3D Helium Survey may be performed over identified zones with increased permeability to refine the contours of such zones.

  • Areas of higher helium concentrations are mapped, helium anomalies interpreted and ranked according to the certain types.


2. Determination of the UGS/UOS gas flow density

 

  • The gas flow density is determined at a given time in the selected permeable zones.

  • The total flow of gas into the atmosphere is calculated.


3. Study of long-term variations in gas flow from UGS/UOS

 

  • A few stationary gas monitoring stations must be placed within the zone of higher permeability for observation of gas flow density over a reasonable time interval to get the entire range of gas flow variations during different seasons.

  • In seismically active regions it makes sense to record seismic activity since gas flow may depend on it.

  • An anthropogenic factor calculated taking into account that an increase/decrease in gas pressure in UGS/UOS facilities leads to a corresponding increase/decrease in gas flow at the surface.

  • A  gas flow model is constructed taking into account time factors (tidal forces, atmospheric pressure variations, soil moisture and temperature variations).

  • A long term precise forecast of the gas flow from UGS/UOS into the atmosphere is produced. 

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Integrated studies

To improve geological understanding of the storage sites and calculate the potential impact of faults on the migration of injected natural gas, CO2 or crude oil, our sister company Novel Prospecting Ltd. carries out helium surveys, create structural geomodels of the storage sites, assess the presence of across-fault seals and leakage along the bounding faults and identify if faults could provide barriers to plume migration, allowing gas to become trapped and thereby increasing the storage capacity.

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Service package includes: 

  • Heliometric data acquisition and processing

  • Seismic data interpretation, well control and modelling

  • Structural characterization

  • Across-fault seal assessment

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Cavern storages

Porous rock storageS

OIL/GAS and CO2 capture STORAGES
 

modelling and INTEGRITY ASSESSMENT in PROSPECTING and operations

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