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Toward Improving the Assessment of Induced Earthquakes in the Rome Trough of West Virginia

Description: 

As part of the Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative, a project funded by DOE and managed by Battelle, the potential for inducing earthquakes from future geologic CO₂ storage (GCS) is being assessed across a 20-state region of the northeastern quadrant of the U.S. Recent studies of induced seismicity (IS) in the project area, specifically in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, suggest that an injection zone’s proximity to crystalline basement is a major factor related to IS susceptibility. To assist with identifying candidate reservoirs for GCS with low IS susceptibility, we investigated correlations between earthquake activity and geologic structure using a new earthquake catalog and a new topographic map of the top of the Precambrian crystalline basement. The earthquake compilation includes events induced or likely induced by wastewater disposal and fracking and contains all known earthquakes of magnitude 2.2 and greater and all known events of any magnitude since 2009.

Consistent with previous studies, we find that earthquakes were typically induced by fluid injections within ~1 km of the top of Precambrian. An exceptional case occurred in West Virginia from 2010 to 2013 near the southeastern boundary of the Rome Trough. In this case, probable IS correlated with fluid injections at heights in the sedimentary strata from ~3.5 km to ~4.5 km above the Precambrian. These events were reported at anomalously shallow depths, also well above Precambrian. However, their focal depths are poorly constrained and seismicity appears diffuse. Here, we attempt to enhance the earthquake catalog and to improve the hypocenter determinations by detecting additional events using continuous broadband datasets from regional stations and by jointly relocating the events in the region surrounding the injection activities. Preliminary detections using standard techniques have revealed only a single earthquake in the nearly two years after the sequence appeared to end. The next steps will involve enhancing the detections using machine-learning-based techniques.

Session: Seismic Monitoring, Modelling and Management Needed for Geothermal Energy and Geologic Carbon Storage [Poster Session]

Type: Poster

Date: 5/2/2024

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Seth

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors