Feasibility of using in situ deformation to monitor CO2 storage

•Normal strains are tensile near a well, but one component is compressive elsewhere.•Strain rate scales with injection rate and the inverse of depth cubed.•Emerging instruments can measure strains expected in reservoir and confining unit.•In-situ strain data fill monitoring gap between seismicity and time lapse InSAR/GPS.•In-situ strain data for characterizing reservoirs and monitoring for CO2 leaks. Deformation during CO2 injection can lead to problems, like seismicity or fluid leaks, but small strains have the potential to be a useful signal for monitoring. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the possible evolution of the strain field during injection, and then assess existing and emerging techniques for measuring the strain field. Poroelastic analyses show that normal strains caused by injection into a reservoir are tensile in the vicinity of the well, but everywhere else at least one strain component is compressive. The vertical strain is compressive in the confining unit, and the radial strain decreases and changes sign from tensile to compressive with distance from the well. Tilting is away from the injection well at the ground surface, but it is towards the well overlying the reservoir. Methods for measuring in-situ strain include instruments that are grouted in the annulus between casing and wall rock (∼ 0.1 microstrain resolution), portable strain sensors that are temporarily clamped to the borehole wall (∼ 0.01 microstrain resolution), and strainmeters that are grouted in place (∼0.001 microstrain resolution). Instruments for measuring in-situ normal strains at the magnitudes and rates expected during injection are emerging, but they have yet to be fully evaluated in applications related to CO2 storage. In-situ strain data measured with emerging instruments promises to fill an important gap between the episodes of fast strain rates measured by seismic data, and the slow strains measured over relatively long periods of time by InSAR and GPS.