Assessing Hydraulic Fracture Stimulation Effectiveness with Microseismicity, An Engineering Perspective

The Kiel Process involves pumping a stage, stopping the pumps to let stresses redistribute, and then continuing to pump. Theoretically, the process should stimulate some fracture initially, and different fractures at the end of the stage. We show using seismic moment tensor inversion that this behaviour is indeed observed for a couple of stages where this technique was attempted.