Potential Poroelastic Triggering of the 2020 M 5.0 Mentone Earthquake in the Delaware Basin, Texas, by Shallow Injection Wells
Description:
The Delaware basin in Texas, one of the largest oil and gas production sites in the United States, has been impacted by widespread seismicity in recent years. The M 5.0 earthquake that occurred in March 2020 near the town of Mentone is one of the largest induced earthquakes recorded in this region. Characterizing the source parameters and triggering mechanism of this major event is imperative to assess and mitigate future hazard risk. A former study showed that this event may be attributed to the deep injection nearby. Interestingly, the earthquake is in proximity to shallow injection wells with much larger total injection volume. In this study, we investigate the role of these shallow injection wells in the triggering of the M 5.0 event despite their farther distance from the mainshock than the deep wells. We first perform source‐parameter inversion and earthquake relocation to determine the precise orientation of the south‐facing normal‐fault plane where the mainshock occurred, followed by fully coupled poroelastic stress modeling of the change of Coulomb failure stress (CFS) on the fitted fault plane caused by shallow injection in the region. Results show that shallow wells included in our analysis caused close to 20 kPa of CFS change near the mainshock location, dominated by positive poroelastic stress change. Such perturbation surpasses the general triggering threshold of faults that are well aligned with the local stress field and suggests the nonnegligible role of these shallow wells in the triggering of the mainshock. We also discuss the complex effect of poroelastic stress perturbation in the subsurface and highlight the importance of detailed geomechanical evaluation of the reservoir when developing relevant operational and safety policies.
Session: Induced Earthquakes: Source Characteristics, Mechanisms, Stress Field Modeling and Hazards - II
Type: Oral
Date: 5/1/2024
Presentation Time: 11:00 AM (local time)
Presenting Author: Semechah K. Y.
Student Presenter: No
Invited Presentation: Yes
Authors
Semechah K. Y. Lui Presenting Author Corresponding Author semechah.lui@utoronto.ca University of Toronto |
Xinyu Tan xy.tan@mail.utoronto.ca University of Toronto |
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Potential Poroelastic Triggering of the 2020 M 5.0 Mentone Earthquake in the Delaware Basin, Texas, by Shallow Injection Wells
Category
Induced Earthquakes: Source Characteristics, Mechanisms, Stress Field Modeling and Hazards