Structural Constraints of Induced Earthquakes in the Weiyuan Shale Gas Field Revealed by High-Resolution Body-Wave Tomography and Earthquake Relocation

Zi, Jinping; Yang, Hongfeng; Su, Jinrong; Chen, Liang

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4330253

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Window lengths of 1.5 s (0.5 s before and 1.0 s after) and 4s (1s before and 3s after) are applied to P and S waves respectively for three-component waveform cross-correlation. Double-difference earthquake relocation 53 with cross-correlation differential times was conducted using the tomoDD program 54 with an improved local 3D velocity structure 55 . A bootstrap method was applied to evaluate the location uncertainties by inversion for 100 times with resampling differential times, which presents a standard deviation of horizontal and vertical errors at 50 m and 80 m respectively.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress Transfer Outpaces Injection-Induced Aseismic Slip and Triggers Seismicity

Yang

2023

Preprint

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As concerns rise over damaging earthquakes related to industrial activities such as hydraulic fracturing, geothermal energy extraction and wastewater disposal, it is essential to understand how subsurface fluid injection triggers seismicity even in distant regions where pore pressure diffusion cannot reach. Previous studies suggested long-range poroelastic stressing and aseismic slip as potential triggering mechanisms. In this study, we show that significant stress transfer originating from injection-induced aseismic slip can travel at much higher speeds and is a viable mechanism for distant earthquake triggering. It could also explain microseismicity migration that is much faster than aseismic slip front propagation. We demonstrate the application of these concepts with seismicity triggered by hydraulic fracturing operations in Weiyuan Shale Gas Field, China. The speed of stress transfer is dependent on the background stress level and injection rate, and can be almost an order of magnitude higher than that of the aseismic slip front.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%