Integrating Poroelastic Effects of Wastewater Injection and Rupture Dynamics to Understand Induced Seismicity

Copyright 2018, Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC). Seismicity induced by the waste water injection has become an important issue in the recent years, including several regions in United States, such as Oklahoma and Texas. However, many techniques that are used to evaluate whether a particular earthquake is induced or natural are not based on the law of physics, and as a consequence these techniques do not provide much insight into nature of that type of seismicity. In this study we combine the analytic solution of coupled hydromechanical problem with numerical dynamic rupture simulation to study the influence of different properties of the rocks and fluids, as well as the geometry of the operations on the potential for earthquake triggering. We find three main driving factors are the distance between the injection well and the fault, permeability of the medium and shear modulus of the rocks. We also observe that keeping injecting the fluid at the same rate after first occurrence of seismic event, escalates the size of earthquakes with time.

Integrating Poroelastic Effects of Wastewater Injection and Rupture Dynamics to Understand Induced Seismicity Conference Paper