Geosciences Journal

The Association of Korean Geoscience Societies (한국지질과학협의회)
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Characteristics in hypocenters of microseismic events due to hydraulic fracturing and natural faults: a case study in the Horn River Basin, Canada

  • Woo, Jeong-Ung (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Juhwan (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University) ;
  • Rhie, Junkee (School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kang, Tae-Seob (Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Pukyong National University)
  • Received : 2016.09.08
  • Accepted : 2017.05.03
  • Published : 2017.10.01
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Abstract

For two to three decades, microseismic monitoring has been popular in the development of unconventional resources, because the fracture network generated by hydraulic fracturing mainly controls the productivity, and microseismic monitoring enables direct measurements for imaging the fracture network. Nevertheless, some refinements are required to make this method more practical. One challenge is to quantify the effects of pre-existing natural fractures for generating microseismic events. We determine the hypocenters of microseismic events occurring in a shale gas play in the Horn River Basin, Canada, and report several interesting spatial and temporal features of the hypocenter distributions. Automatic phase-picking is applied to waveform data recorded at 98 shallow buried three-component geophones, and phases thought to be from the same event are associated. The initial hypocenters of events are determined by iterative linear inversion algorithm then relocated using a double-difference algorithm, where relative travel time measurements are obtained with the waveform cross-correlation. We group events into many clusters based on fracking stages and their hypocenters, and then define the best-fitting plane of hypocenters for each cluster. Most strikes of the best-fitting planes are consistent with the direction of local horizontal stress maximum, indicating that hydraulic fracturing induces most microseismic events. However, the best-fitting planes of several clusters have strikes similar to those of pre-existing faults or fractures, indicating that pre-existing natural faults or fractures can affect the generation of microseismic events. In addition, some observations suggest that natural fractures can affect the temporal evolution of the spatial occurrence pattern of microseismic events. We observed specific migration patterns of microseismic events around known faults in the study area. Although further work is required for complete understanding of this phenomenon, our observations help elucidate the nature of microseismic generation.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

Supported by : Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP)

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