Publications Details
Observations of broad-band micro-seisms during reservoir stimulation
During hydrocarbon reservoir stimulations, such as hydraulic fracturing, the cracking and slippage of the formation results in the emission of seismic energy. The objective of this study was to determine the properties of these induced micro-seisms. A hydraulic fracture experiment was performed in the Piceance Basin of Western Colorado to induce and record micro-seismic events. The formation was subjected to four processes; breakdown/ballout, step-rate test, KCL mini-fracture, and linear-gel mini-fracture. Micro-seisms were acquired with an advanced three-component wall-locked seismic accelerometer package, placed in an observation well 211 ft offset from the fracture well. During the two hours of formation treatment, more than 1200 micro-seisms with signal-to-noise ratios in excess of 20 dB were observed. The observed micro- seisms had a nominally flat frequency spectrum from 100 Hz to 1500 Hz and lack the spurious tool-resonance effects evident in previous attempts to measure micro-seisms. Both p-wave and s-wave arrivals are clearly evident in the data set, and hodogram analysis yielded coherent estimates of the event locations. This paper describes the characteristics of the observed micro- seismic events (event occurrence, signal-to-noise ratios, and bandwidth) and illustrates that the new acquisition approach results in enhanced detectability and event location resolution.