Microseismic Monitoring of Reservoir Stimulation: Case Studies and Implications for Improved Geomechanical Characterization

Microseismic monitoring is a well-established but still widely underestimated technique to characterize reservoir geomechanical parameters and processes related to stimulation using fluid injection. We present two case studies in which we applied state of the art seismological methods investigating data sets of induced seismicity. Physical processes occurring in the reservoir during massive fluid injection can be determined with substantially refined resolution if appropriate effort is undertaken to acquire high-quality microseismic recordings. While the presented results were obtained for geothermal reservoirs the techniques can be applied to any type of geo reservoir.