Evidence for a transient hydromechanical and frictional faulting response during the 2011 Mw 5.6 Prague, Oklahoma earthquake sequence

Norbeck, Jack H.; Horne, Roland N.

doi:10.1002/2016jb013148

Cited by 31 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(118 reference statements)

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“…One particularly important prediction of that system is that a small rapid change of stress may result in a large number of earthquake activities (Dieterich, 1994;Dieterich & Kilgore, 1996). Such a law has been successfully applied to model the spatial and temporal characteristics of earthquake clustering phenomena, including aftershocks (Dieterich, 1994;Stein, 1999), foreshocks (Dieterich & Kilgore, 1996;Norbeck & Horne, 2016), magma-induced earthquake swarms (Dieterich et al, 2000;Toda et al, 2002), and injection-induced seismicity (Barbour et al, 2017;Dieterich et al, 2015). While the change of injection rate and well pressure would generate instantaneous elastic stress and undrained poroelastic pressure change, as well as a delayed drained poroelastic response related to pore pressure diffusion, the following two characteristics of the induced seismicity suggest the elastic and undrained poroelastic response being the triggering stress perturbation: (1) The induced seismicity occurs 11-17 hr after the abrupt changes of injection rate and well pressure.…”

Section: 1029/2018jb015863mentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismicity Induced by Simultaneous Abrupt Changes of Injection Rate and Well Pressure in Hutubi Gas Field

et al. 2018

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Hutubi gas field, the largest gas storage field in China, has been operated on annual injection/extraction cycles since 9 June 2013. We study the seismicity near the gas field from 9 June 2013 to 22 October 2015, a time span that the gas field has experienced three injection periods and two extraction periods, and explore its physical mechanism based on the relationship between seismicity and field operation. We identify 273 events (ML > 1) in the region within 10 km of the gas field, with 97% of those occurring in the first two injection periods, 0.4% in the third injection period, and 1% in the two extraction periods. Seismicity in the first two injection periods occurs mostly as shallow clusters (focal depth < 2 km) at two locations: with one along the fault that marks the southern boundary of the gas field and the other about 2 km south to the southeastern tip of the gas field with the seismicity distributed along north‐south direction. The seismicity does not correlate with total gas injection volume, injection rate, or well pressure. It instead occurs 11–17 hr after simultaneous abrupt increases/decreases of gas injection rate and well pressure in the field operation in the first two injection periods when some accumulative injection has reached. Such relationship is consistent with a physical mechanism that the seismicity near Hutubi gas field is induced on pore‐pressured faults with a rate‐ and state‐dependent friction law through an abrupt change of stress in elastic and undrained poroelastic responses to simultaneous abrupt changes of injection rate and well pressure. Our study also points to the possibility that induced seismicity may be controllable in some practical field operations.

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Section: 1029/2018jb015863mentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismicity Induced by Simultaneous Abrupt Changes of Injection Rate and Well Pressure in Hutubi Gas Field

et al. 2018

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“…We point out that former model, motivated by fracture stimulation in tight reservoirs, assumed fluid perturbations only within the fault and is less appropriate for general fluid-induced earthquakes; additionally, it is the fault pressure rather than the fault poroelastic stress that is passed from the fluid problem to the solid problem, so the model is essentially fluid-to-solid decoupled. Recently, applications to induced seismicity of the former were reported by, for example, Gischig (2015) and Norbeck and Horne (2016) and of the latter model by Juanes et al (2016) and Cueto-Felgueroso et al (2017).…”

Section: 1029/2018jb015669mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fully Dynamic Spontaneous Rupture Due to Quasi‐Static Pore Pressure and Poroelastic Effects: An Implicit Nonlinear Computational Model of Fluid‐Induced Seismic Events

Jin

Zoback

2018

JGR Solid Earth

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Fluid perturbations play a pivotal role in triggering earthquakes. However, the role of fluid in the coseismic rupture process remains largely unknown. To this end, we develop a 2‐D fully dynamic spontaneous rupture model for fluid‐induced earthquakes. The effect of fluid in the preseismic quasi‐static regime is modeled as either pore pressure diffusion or fully coupled poroelasticity, using our Jin and Zoback (2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014892) computational model. The two approaches lead to radically different predictions on the time of earthquake nucleation. Correspondingly, the evolved fluid pressure or poroelastic stress on the fault, together with the spatially altered density of the fluid‐saturated hosting rock, is passed to the dynamic regime. Under the assumption of an undrained coseismic fluid‐solid system, we discretize the fully dynamic Cauchy equation of motion subjected to an exact fault contact constraint using a split‐node finite element method in space and an implicit Newmark family finite difference method in time. Within each time step, a fully implicit Newton‐Raphson scheme is implemented iteratively for linearizing the fully discrete equations. Within each Newton iteration, a physics‐based and nonstationary preconditioner is designed to accelerate the convergence of the selected generalized minimal residual method iterative linear solver. The effect of fluid is highlighted throughout the discretization and computational procedures. Finally, by conducting a numerical experiment, we illustrate that a fully coupled poroelastic model can lead to significantly different predictions on coseismic rupture behaviors and wavefields compared to a decoupled model. Our computational model can also serve as one of the earliest full‐physics modeling tool for fluid‐induced earthquakes.

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“…This type of seismicity is generally of small moment magnitude ( M w < 3). However, some of these injection‐induced earthquakes have reached magnitudes greater than 5 (Ellsworth, ; Keranen et al, ; Petersen et al, ; Weingarten et al, ), such as the 2011 M w 5.6 Prague (Barnhart et al, ; Keranen et al, ; Norbeck & Horne, ; Sumy et al, ; Sun & Hartzell, ) or the September 2016 M w 5.8 Pawnee (Walter et al, ; Yeck et al, ) earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aseismic Motions Drive a Sparse Seismicity During Fluid Injections Into a Fractured Zone in a Carbonate Reservoir

et al. 2017

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An increase in fluid pressure in faults can trigger seismicity and large aseismic motions. Understanding how fluid and faults interact is an essential goal for seismic hazard and reservoir monitoring, but this key relation remains unclear. We developed an in situ experiment of fluid injections at a 10 meter scale. Water was injected at high pressure in different geological structures inside a fault damaged zone, in limestone at 280 m depth in the Low Noise Underground Laboratory (France). Induced seismicity, as well as strains, pressure, and flow rate, was continuously monitored during the injections. Although nonreversible deformations related to fracture reactivations were observed for all injections, only a few tests generated seismicity. Events are characterized by a 0.5‐to‐4 kHz content and a small magnitude (approximately −3.5). They are located within 1.5 m accuracy between 1 and 12 m from the injections. Comparing strain measurements and seismicity shows that more than 96% of the deformation is aseismic. The seismic moment is also small compared to the one expected from the injected volume. Moreover, a dual seismic behavior is observed as (1) the spatiotemporal distribution of some cluster of events is clearly independent from the fluid diffusion (2) while a diffusion‐type pattern can be observed for some others clusters. The seismicity might therefore appear as an indirect effect to the fluid pressure, driven by aseismic motion and related stress perturbation transferred through failure.

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Evidence for a transient hydromechanical and frictional faulting response during the 2011 M_w 5.6 Prague, Oklahoma earthquake sequence

Cited by 31 publications

References 52 publications

Seismicity Induced by Simultaneous Abrupt Changes of Injection Rate and Well Pressure in Hutubi Gas Field

Seismicity Induced by Simultaneous Abrupt Changes of Injection Rate and Well Pressure in Hutubi Gas Field

Fully Dynamic Spontaneous Rupture Due to Quasi‐Static Pore Pressure and Poroelastic Effects: An Implicit Nonlinear Computational Model of Fluid‐Induced Seismic Events

Aseismic Motions Drive a Sparse Seismicity During Fluid Injections Into a Fractured Zone in a Carbonate Reservoir

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