Geophysical Logging

From tapping natural resources to tracking caches for unnatural residuals

Jean LW Lequeux

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Logging techniques started in the early 20's. For now, quite a century it was used to measure physical properties of rocks in order to evaluate potential productivity of oil or gas wells. Now, it becomes a technical way to find natural caches for unwanted residuals…

How Geophysical Logging could save the planet.

Geophysical Logging Techniques: Stakes and Issues
New challenges for the preservation our planet
Further readings:
Community:
Contributor’s publications:

Geophysical Logging Techniques: Stakes and Issues

When the geophysicists of the early decades of the 20^th Century found out that electrical, physical, electromagnetic and atomic measures have a direct links to the mechanical quality of the underground, such as:

Porosity
Permeability
Rock fracturation
Layers thickness

… the practices of evaluating quality of oil and gas natural reservoirs were born. For eighty years now, scientists were assessing potential productivity of exploration drilled wells from interpretations of these measurements.

In the late 70’s, at the Conference of Stockholm, Professor Ignacy Sachs pointed out the ecological impacts of our economies and especially of our energy production and consumption.

In the mid-eighties, the civilian nuclear industries started to find out how to store as deeply as possible the radioactive residuals of their productions. Then, as the same logging Techniques were used to determine natural cavities to store strategic oil reserves, the profession started to apply the same way to discover long term storage caches for radioactive garbage.

It was the beginning of new usage of these technologies and practices.

New challenges for the preservation our planet

With the continuous warm-up of the Earth, the unwanted production of carbon and Carbon dioxide (CO₂) become real dangers for humanity. Now, the same techniques are going to be used for discovering cavities and caches for C and CO₂. For sure, it is a workaround for avoiding immediate air pollution and warming up of the atmosphere. However, we don’t have any answer concerning long-terms effects of underground unnatural storage of carbon and carbon dioxide.

Moreover, as both residuals must be collected before being injected in the traps, pollution produced by cars, planes and all other mobile vehicles could not be trapped. . Although the efficiency of the method is obvious for big production entities: factories, heating centrals, etc., it is not possible to be sure of the impacts on global reduction of warm-up and pollution.

Another point might be disturbing: These technologies do not reduce the production of C and CO₂. They contribute only to “hide” them. But, in some decades, excessive quantity of C and CO₂ will cause other problems… unless, in some decades, cracking techniques would allow low-cost recombination of the stored carbon and dioxide with hydrogen to produce water and hydrocarbons…

Community:

- The Society of Exploration Geophysicists: http://www.seg.org

Contributor’s publications:

- Enhancement of the perception of seismic facies and sequences by image analysis techniques by G. Sibille, N. Keskes, J. M. Fontaine, R. Lanaud, and J. L. Lequeux in SEG Expanded Abstract 3, 477 (1984)

- Spectral balancing of seismic sections by evaluation of the quality factor versus time and distance by J. L. Lequeux, G. Arens, W. Crans, and C. Richard in SEG Expanded Abstract 2, 369 (1983)

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