1887

Abstract

Summary

Determining the dominant physical processes occurring during injection-related fault activation is a vital component in the monitoring and mitigation strategies employed by numerous industries. Fluid processes (pore-pressure changes, poroelastic effects) are significant, though some recent studies have shown that stress interactions due to elastic deformation may contribute to further failure. Using a large microseismic dataset, acquired during the extensive downhole monitoring of a hydraulic fracturing operation, the elastic Coulomb stress changes are modelled for an identified period of fault reactivation. It was found that elastic stresses may have weakly promoted further failure during the initial phase of activity, after which stress changes generally acted to inhibit further slip. Taking into account the focal mechanism uncertainty (via bootstrapping permuted event geometries with a Von Mises distribution), the positive signal observed in this first activation period is still present though with a significantly reduced amplitude. Increasing the value of Skempton’s ratio, simulating the presence of pressurised fluid, acts to further weaken the positive signal observed in the first period of activation. Thus, the initial modelling, as well as the sensitivity analysis, suggest that fluid effects most likely dominated the triggering in this case.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201801608
2018-06-11
2024-03-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Catalli, F., Meier, M.A. and Wiemer, S.
    [2013] The role of Coulomb stress changes for injection-induced seismicity: The Basel enhanced geothermal system. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, 72–77.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Catalli, F., Rinaldi, A.P., Gischig, V., Nespoli, M. and Wiemer, S.
    [2016] The importance of earthquake interactions for injection-induced seismicity: Retrospective modeling of the Basel Enhanced Geothermal System. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(10), 4992–4999.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Davies, R., Foulger, G., Bindley, A. and Styles, P.
    [2013] Induced seismicity and hydraulic fracturing for the recovery of hydrocarbons. Marine and Petroleum Geology, 45, 171–185.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Ellsworth, W.L.
    [2013] Injection-Induced Earthquakes. Science, 341(6142), 1225942.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Meier, M., Werner, M.J., Woessner, J. and Wiemer, S.
    [2014] A search for evidence of secondary static stress triggering during the 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers, California, earthquake sequence. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 119, 3354–3370.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Pennington, C. and Chen, X.
    [2017] Coulomb Stress Interactions during the MW 5.8 Pawnee Sequence. Seismological Research Letters, 88(4), 1024–1031.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Steacy, S., Marsan, D., Nalbant, S.S. and McCloskey, J.
    [2004] Sensitivity of static stress calculations to the earthquake slip distribution. Journal of Geophysical Research, 109, 16.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Vavryčuk, V.
    [2014] Iterative joint inversion for stress and fault orientations from focal mechanisms. Geophysical Journal International, 199(1), 69–77.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. [2015] Moment tensor decompositions revisited. Journal of Seismology, 19(1), 231–252.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Wang, R., Lorenzo-Martin, F. and Roth, F.
    [2006] PSGRN/PSCMP - A new code for calculating co- and post-seismic deformation, geoid and gravity changes based on the viscoelastic-gravitational dislocation theory. Computers and Geosciences, 32(4), 527–541.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201801608
Loading
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201801608
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error