Effect of Source Mispositioning on the Repeatability of 4D Vertical Seismic Profiling Acquired with Distributed Acoustic Sensors

Vertical seismic profiling (VSP) with distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is an increasingly popular evolving technique for reservoir monitoring. DAS technology enables permanent fibre installations in wells and simultaneous seismic data recording along an entire borehole. Deploying the receivers closer to the reservoir allows for better detectability of smaller signals. A high level of repeatability is essential for the robust time-lapse monitoring of geological reservoirs. One of the prominent factors of repeatability degradation is a shift between source/receiver locations (mispositioning) during baseline and monitor surveys. While the mispositioning effect has been extensively studied for surface 4D seismic, the number of such studies for VSP is quite limited. To study the effects of source mispositioning on time-lapse data repeatability, we performed two VSP experiments at two on-shore sites with vibroseis. The first study was carried out at the Otway International Test Centre during Stage 3 of the Otway project and showed that the effect of source mispositioning on repeatability is negligible in comparison with the effect of temporal variations of the near-surface conditions. To avoid these limitations, we conducted a same-day controlled experiment at the Curtin University site. This second experiment showed that the effect of source mispositioning on repeatability is controlled by the degree of lateral variations of the near-surface conditions. Unlike in marine seismic measurements, lateral variations of near-surface properties can be strong and rapid and can degrade the repeatability for shifts of the source of a few meters. The greater the mispositioning, the higher the chance of such significant variations. When the near-surface conditions are laterally homogeneous, the effect of typical source mispositioning is small, and in all practical monitoring applications its contribution to non-repeatability is negligible.