‘Hindcasting’ helps identify causes of induced earthquakes in the Delaware Basin – ScienceDaily

Using a method that works inversely from the observed seismic array to test seismic models that fit those observations, researchers working in the Delaware Basin were able to determine whether earthquakes in the region since 2017 were caused by oil and gas processes.

The new study, published in Seismology Research Letters, also indicates whether seismic activity in a specific part or “mass” of the basin, which stretches through western Texas and New Mexico, is caused by hydraulic fracturing or shallow or deep wastewater disposal.

Iason Grigoratos of ETH Zürich, the Swiss seismological service, and colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin calculated how likely one or both of these processes were to cause seismic activity in each block, and found that at least 68% of the Delaware Basin earthquakes in their study occurred where they were Oil and gas activities are the likely cause at a 95 percent confidence interval. Grigoratos conducted the study while he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas.

The SRL study found that hydraulic fracturing was associated with more seismic events than previously thought, particularly within Reeves County in Texas. However, Gregoratos and colleagues conclude that shallower wastewater disposal (about one to two kilometers below ground level) is associated with more earthquakes overall.

Researchers have found that earthquakes around Pecos appear to be affected by hydraulic fracturing and sewage disposal. Within Colperson County, Texas, and around the epicenter of the 5.0-magnitude 2020 Minton, Texas earthquake, the triggering mechanism appears to be the dumping of sewage from deep wells.

Historically, the Delaware Basin has experienced very low seismicity, with only three events above 4.8 degrees in the past 100 years. But seismic rates have been gradually rising in the region since 2009, and accelerated further after 2013. These changes are associated with increased injection volumes in both hydraulic fracturing and sewage disposal wells in the region since 2013.

In their paper, Gregoratos and colleagues “predicted magnitude 1.5 rates and larger earthquakes that occurred in the Delaware Basin after 2017, using data on hydraulic fracturing or wastewater disposal in the region as an input to their prediction model.” They compared these rates to the rates expected under regular tectonic conditions in the region.

The backstop method does well in untangling the potential causes of earthquakes in regions with multiple types of overlapping oil and gas operations, Gregoratos said.

Looking at changes in well operations over a specific time and interval can be useful in studying “isolated seismic outbursts in regions of low well density, such as in earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing in regions where oil and gas operations do not overlap.” note, but it is “not well suited to dealing with wastewater disposal, which often shows multi-year delays until the onset of distant and gradual earthquakes.”

He added that background seismic rates over time within specific spatial blocks can take into account changes in injection rates as well as how injection-induced pore pressure propagates through subterranean formations over time and space.

In places where hydraulic fracturing and sewage disposal have taken place, the method does not determine which might be more important in causing earthquakes, Gregoratos said. He explained that “the seismicity in the areas affected by hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal is located in the “shallow” sedimentary layers, and since 2017, it has not reached degrees higher than 3.8 degrees. “Therefore, as long as earthquake faults do not grow larger and do not migrate near exposed assets that are critically important or highly vulnerable, restrictions on the part of the regulator do not seem very likely.”

The researchers noted that the area’s mass map could help oil and gas operators and regulators determine where to put mitigation measures or future earthquake monitoring.

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