This issue:

A new web site for TRE
TRE sponsors the European Student Lecture Tour 2007/2008
The path of interferometric data in Italy
PSInSAR™ for monitoring the effects of CO2 sequestration underground
Event calendar

In the news

First of all, since this is the first issue of our Newsletter in 2008, we would like to wish Happy New Year to all our readers! We hope you will continue to enjoy our news on initiatives and activities regarding PSInSAR™ and satellite radar data.

A new web site for TRE

We are pleased to announce that TRE now has a new web site on line. It has been designed with a focus on improving user experience and promoting a stronger brand identity.
This is part of our ongoing commitment to improve communication with our customers, particularly as it relates to our technology, our service products and our research activities.

Keep surfing our site to get a feel for our new look and please send any observations to info@treuropa.com to help us improve our services.

TRE sponsors the European Student Lecture Tour 2007/2008

Since 2005, EAGE has reached out to the student community with the EAGE Student Lecture Tour (SLT). The SLT invites Geoscience experts to give presentations on a current Earth Science topic to students from different disciplines and levels. EAGE then invites local Universities to host the event in their region.
The current SLT Tour is organized in Europe and, in addition to the EAGE Student Fund, is sponsored by TRE. The lecturer in charge is Prof. Benoît Déffontaines from the University of Marne-la Vallée (France). His three hour lecture, "New monitoring technologies for natural hazards and surface displacements", will focus on the Earth’s surface and new methods to measure changes of the surface. These techniques can be used, among other things, to identify natural hazard risk areas and to monitor small scale deformations.
The 2007/2008 tour is still in progress (Prof. Deffontaine has already visited 6 Universities) and includes 23 locations (see the calendar).

For more information on the event, visit the EAGE web site

The path of interferometric data in Italy

Significant progress has been made in promoting remote sensing technologies in Italy.
Last 8th and 9th October 2007, the IX European Interparliamentary Space Conference took place at Palazzo Montecitorio– the seat of the Italian Parliament – in Rome. During the Conference, the Director of the National Department of Civil Protection (DPCN), prof. Bernardo De Bernardinis, illustrated some PS results obtained by TRE over a coastal area in Italy. Thanks to the model developed by the University of Florence based on our satellite-derived data, the national and international governmental audience present at the event appreciated the precision with which the slope area, affected by a landslide, and its decollement surface were assessed using PSInSAR™.
Since 2005, DPCN has been using interferometric data within the framework of the Italian “SAR.net” project, as was mentioned in the previous newsletter. SAR.net was conceived to transfer PS measurements to civil protection applications.
Today another important initiative has been undertaken by the Ministry of the Environment and consists of a special national plan for remote sensing. More than five million  Euro have been allocated for creating a database of InSAR data which will cover the entire Italian territory and support local authorities in preventing hydrogeological risk. Beyond who will win the bid, it is important to underline that Italy is pursuing an innovative policy that puts it at the forefront of the field of remote sensing in comparison to other countries. This is also in part due to the promotion of this technique by TRE and the Politecnico di Milano.

Working technology

PSInSAR™ for monitoring the effects of CO2 sequestration underground

Global emissions of CO2 are becoming an urgent problem worldwide and are one of the main causes of climate change. Today Carbon dioxide Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in deep geological formations is seen as a potentially effective method for reducing emissions to the atmosphere, offering new possibilities for the E&P sector.
According to experts, oil fields provide good seal performance for CO2 sequestration. CO2 can be injected and held in natural geological structures that have trapped oil for millions of years. Furthermore, thanks to CO2 injection into mature oil reservoirs, it is also possible to expand oil extraction beyond the original core area, a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).
However, both operations - CCS and EOR – can induce important changes to geophysical parameters at both the ground surface and  reservoir levels. It is therefore important to carefully monitor all phases of these operations. Regarding the ground surface, focus is mainly placed on ground displacements due to the long-term effects of CO2 injection. Monitoring ground displacements requires techniques that can guarantee both high precision measurements (from millimetric to centimetric) and a high temporal and methodological continuity.
Conventional methods such as GPS, levelling, etc. have some evident limitations due to the costs involved, which derive from the high frequency and density of the necessary measurements. On the other hand,  with its precision and updatability over wide areas, PSInSAR™ both significantly reduces  field work and costs and nicely complements traditional geodetic methods.

In an initial stage it is recommendable to use PS information for mapping the area of interest using the historic data archive. Subsequently, the monitoring of the area during and after the injection of CO2 will be based on PSInSAR™ processing with current satellite datasets (presently ENVISAT and RADARSAT-1, soon Cosmo Sky-Med, Terra SAR-X and RADARSAT-2, launched during 2007 and first weeks of 2008, will be available).
As PS displacement measurements are along the satellite Line Of Sight (since the incidence angle of the radar signal is usually less than 30 deg, SAR data are usually very sensitive to vertical displacements), it is nevertheless possible to break down the velocity field along the vertical and horizontal – East to West - directions by combining ascending and descending datasets (while the sensitivity to the N-S direction remains very low for both geometries). This allows users to view deformations quite clearly by highlighting zones in which one component of the movement prevails over another.

Currently, we are still in an experimental stage of CO2 sequestration monitoring, but first results obtained in the latter part of 2007 were considered very promising by the experts of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (California).

Figure: PSInSAR™ analysis over an area affected by uplift phenomena due to CO2 injection.
The dark tones indicate that the distance between the point on the Earth and the satellite is decreasing, most likely due to the uplift from CO2 injection that is occurring in three wells. Range velocities are obtained by processing a sequence of scenes from the ESA ENVISAT archive.

TRE will participate in:

GEO 2008
8th Middle East Geoscience Conference and Exhibition
3-5 March 2008, Manama (Bahrain)

The theme of the conference, "Integrated Geoscience -Technical, Business and People Solutions" is conducive to a myriad of topics that are relevant to the current global energy climate, which range from issues related to the aging workforce and initiatives to attract new talent to the upstream oil and gas industry, advances in technology, reservoir characterization, new play concepts, companies working together in new relationships, and geoscience solutions and applications for non-conventional reservoirs.

Parallel to the conference an extensive exhibition will take place at the Bahrain International Exhibition Centre.

More information on the event website


Saint Petersburg 2008
7-10 April 2008, Saint Petersburg (Russia)

Following the successful event Saint Petersburg 2006, the next international conference and exhibition on geoscience in Russia will be Saint Petersburg 2008. The meeting is jointly organised by the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE), the EurAsian Geophysical Society (EAGO) and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). The broad support of these leading geoscientific societies guarantees a high quality level for both the exhibition and the conference.

More information on the event website


EGU General Assembly 2008
13-18 April 2008, Vienna (Austria)

The EGU General Assembly will bring together geoscientists from all over Europe and the rest of the world into one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. Especially for young scientists the EGU provides a forum to present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geosciences.

More information on the event website


2008 AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition
20-23 April 2008, San Antonio (Texas, USA)

The Annual Convention and Exhibition of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology), in keeping with the convention theme, “Deliver the Conventional; Pursue the Unconventional”, will set the stage for discussions of traditional applications, emerging issues and future opportunities. This year’s program addresses the critical importance of new technology and the advanced knowledge needed to exploit old plays and discover new energy resources.

More information on the event website