Imaging Hydraulic Fracture Zones from Surface Passive Microseismic Data

Most of the current microseismic methods for hydraulic fracture imaging employ multi-level receiver systems deployed on a wire-line array in one or more offset wellbores. Microseisms induced by changes in stress and pore pressure around the hydraulic fracture created when high-pressure liquid and proppant injected into the rock then can be located using conventional techniques based on arrival-time approach. We developed and successfully applied a technique for imaging hydraulic fracture zones from surface passive microseismic data. The dynamics of the process of developing of hydraulic fracture and fracture orientation can be recovered from data and consequently visualized. We demonstrate the technique on several examples from West Siberia production sites.