A Comparison on Land and Downwhole Microseismic Monitoring Scenarios

Microseismic monitoring is a widely used technique in modern industry to image hydraulic fracturing operations. In this paper we plan to compare downhole and surface acquisition systems with a focus on their resolution power in microseismic event location, especially estimating their depth. Similar analysis was made in. The authors concluded that: (i) for surface array lateral positions are estimated robustly and are not sensitive to the velocity model, (ii) for their case study locations derived from surface monitoring showed less scattering in both vertical and horizontal directions compared to those derived from downhole data. Here we decided to revisit and check the second statement taking into account two points. First, we want to perform uncertainty analysis for apertures of surface arrays typically used in Russia. Second, we take into account that only P-wave information is used for surface data while both P-and S-waves are used for downhole data.