Source Mechanism, Stress Triggering, and Hazard Analysis of Induced Seismicity in Oil/Gas Fields in Oman and Kuwait

Abstract:

Induced seismicity has drawn new attentions in both academia and industry in recent years as the increasing seismic activity in the regions of oil/gas fields due to fluid injection/extraction and hydraulic fracturing. Source mechanism and triggering stress of these induced earthquakes are of great importance for understanding their causes and the physics of the seismic processes in reservoirs. Previous research on the analysis of induced seismic events in conventional oil/gas fields assumed a double couple (DC) source mechanism.

The induced seismic data in this study are from both Oman and Kuwait. For the Oman data, the induced seismicity is monitored by both surface network (0<M<3) and downhole network (M<0) in an oil/gas field. The data used in the study consist of 800 events located by the surface network and 2000 events from the downhole network. For the Kuwait data a surface network is used to collect the local seismic data (0<M<5). The good signal noise ratio of the data makes it possible to obtain the source mechanisms and triggering stress. We determine the full moment tensor of the induced seismicity data, based on a full-waveform inversion method (Song and Toksöz, 2011). With the full moment tensor inversion results, Coulomb stress is calculated to investigate the triggering features of the induced seismicity data. Our results show a detailed evolution of 3D triggering stress in oil/gas fields from year 1999 to 2007 for Oman, and from year 2006 to 2015 for Kuwait. In addition, the local hazard corresponding to the induced seismicity in these oil/gas fields is assessed and compared to ground motion prediction due to large (M>5.0) regional tectonic earthquakes.