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Cooperative Seismic Monitoring & Earthquake Response for Saltwater Injection Operations in Texas

Description: 

Saltwater disposal needs in Texas saw tremendous growth since 2007 due to the success of new drilling and fracturing techniques undertaken in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Seismic activity in that area increased soon after. Elevated seismicity was also observed in South Texas during the completion of oil gas wells as early as 2011. The Permian Basin saw even more dramatic increases in activity, with the frequency and magnitude of basement-depth earthquakes accelerating in 2019 when deep injection was increasing, culminating with two magnitude 5.4 earthquakes in late 2022.

The State of Texas established funding for TexNet in 2015 to improve the state's seismic network, growing from 18 stations to nearly 150 stations by mid-2020, increasing resolution and accuracy to help characterize seismic activity near wells in the vicinity of faults.

The Texas oil and gas regulator introduced an incentive program to allow operators to maintain higher daily injection volumes by installing seismic stations to feed additional data to TexNet, and by developing an earthquake response plan for their area of interest.

This cooperative industry-funded seismic monitoring approach is how the Seismology Research Centre (SRC) established its network since the late 1970s. Individual water authorities, who could not afford to fund a network to monitor their areas of interest, were brought together and contribute proportionately to the operation of a broader network. The data was centrally processed by SRC, and the authorities are provided with bespoke information in near real-time for emergency response.

The SRC's local seismic monitoring workflow and data management system lent itself perfectly for operators in Texas to establish and manage private seismic arrays to determine earthquake locations and magnitudes. The data from these operator-managed networks is also streamed to TexNet's public network in real time as a permit condition of the regulator's incentive program. Between 40 and 50 stations have been added to TexNet through this program, providing greatly increased capabilities for seismic event management and emergency response.

Session: Understanding and Managing Induced Seismicity

Type: Oral

Date: 4/19/2023

Presentation Time: 08:30 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Adam Pascale

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors