Detecting Contaminants in Aquifers through Modeling of Surface-downhole Geoelectrical Data

M.V. BONGIOVANNI; GRUNHUT DUENYAS VIVIAN; A. OSELLA

Near Surface Geoscience 2015. 21th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics.

European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE)

Año: 2015; p. 176 - 180

Most of the world´s reservoirs are currently in the advanced primary or secondary recovery stage. Eventhough sinks wells used by oil companies are located much deeper than aquifers, they may eventuallycause environmental damages contaminating the water with brine leakage, oil spill or other pollutingagent. This is why it is extremely important to do vulnerability studies.Since contaminants have different electrical conductivity than water, geoelectrical methods can be usefulto detect and even monitor flow evolution of the contamination plume.We want to analyze if it is possible to detect contaminations of an aquifer that lies above an oil reservoir,approximately at 300 m depth, with current injections on surface and voltages sensors in a well. In order toachieve this we have designed an electrical model of the reservoir including the contaminated aquifer with,either a conductive contamination such as saline brine or a resistive contamination such as oil spill, and numerically simulated the forward geoelectrical responses