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Identifying Long Period Long Duration Events Spatially Associated With Hydraulic Stimulation Operations

Robert L. Walker, Abash Kumar, Richard Hammack, Brian Dressel, William Harbert, & Fred Aminzadeh

Published August 15, 2017, SCEC Contribution #7742, 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #048

Long Period long duration seismic activity has been documented as observed in conjunction with hydraulic stimulation of low permeability hydrocarbon bearing formations. These LPLD events are similar to that observed in subduction zones, and is thought to represent slow shear slip on nearby faults.

We investigate data from a high resolution, three component, surface geophone deployment, deployed in conjunction with hydraulic stimulation of a horizontal well. The location of the well is in an area of Texas where hydraulic stimulation operations are conducted frequently and in close spatial proximity. We identify traditional microseismicity as well as regional seismic activity, and discriminate this from LPLD activity. We also apply Butterworth filtering, Polarization Analysis, and Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) techniques to better discern LPLD activity.

Key Words
LPLD, Fracking

Citation
Walker, R. L., Kumar, A., Hammack, R., Dressel, B., Harbert, W., & Aminzadeh, F. (2017, 08). Identifying Long Period Long Duration Events Spatially Associated With Hydraulic Stimulation Operations. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting.


Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology