Passive Microseismic in the Canning Basin - Direct Hydrocarbon sensing

A method for directly detecting hydrocarbons with minimal environmental impact is presented here with deployment examples from a recent Canning Basin project. To maintain their social license to operate oil and gas explorers and producers must seek to reduce their environmental footprint and regulatory authorities are required to reduce impact to an acceptable and as low as reasonably practical level. This creates a window of opportunity for advanced, disruptive technologies, which avoid dry holes and shorten the appraisal and development timeframe, while minimising the impact on the environment. Low-frequency seismic (LFS) is such a technology and here we describe its onshore application. Passive microseismic surveys are well known in engineering geology and seismology; however, in oil and gas industry it is a relatively new geophysical area and their usage is increasing every year. Passive microseismic surveys are a solution both for exploration, de-risking near-field step-outs and siting infill wells in oil and gas accumulations. During August-September 2021 passive seismic data was acquired in the Canning Basin of Western Australia for Buru Energy Ltd and its joint venture partner Origin Energy West Pty Ltd . The author was on site for the deployment and shares here details of the successes and challenges of data acquisition in the remote desert regions of Australia. Between February - August 2022 the passive data was processed by TenzorGEO, and the results of this processing are presented.