Interpretation and Application of Microseismic Images

Microseismic monitoring (MSM) of hydraulic fracture treatments is routine in North America and has added significantly to our understanding of fracture growth. The interpretation of microseismic images is advancing steadily, extracting more information from event patterns, temporal evolution, and acoustic waveforms. The increasing amount of information from MSM provides significant opportunities to improve stimulation designs, completion strategies, and field development. However, the applications of microseismic interpretations are many times ill-defined, overlooked, or not applied properly. The integration of microseismic images, fracture modeling and reservoir simulation is required to determine the effective stimulated volume. One of the most common misapplications of microseismic interpretations is the assumption that larger stimulated volume (SV) will automatically result in increased well productivity. Characterizing propped and un-propped regions of the hydraulic fracture is critical when evaluating well performance and estimating drainage area and hydrocarbon recovery. This abstract highlights the interpretation and application of microseismic images using excerpts from SPE 152165 (Cipolla et al 2011a).