Engineering Guide to the Application of Microseismic Interpretations

Abstract

abstractMicroseismic monitoring (MSM) of hydraulic fracture treatments is routine in North America and has added significantly to our understanding of fracture growth. The interpretation of microseismic images is advancing steadily, extracting more information from event patterns, temporal evolution, and acoustic waveforms. The increasing amount of information from MSM provides significant opportunities to improve stimulation designs, completion strategies, and field development. However, the applications of microseismic interpretations are many times ill-defined, overlooked, or not applied properly. Numerous applications of microseismic measurements have been documented in technical publications, typically in the form of case histories focused on specific applications. The industry has lacked a compilation and comprehensive discussion of microseismic applications. This paper presents a practical guide for the engineering application of microseismic interpretations, documenting reliable application workflows while highlighting the consequences of misapplication of microseismic interpretations.The application of MSM starts with a reliable interpretation of fracture geometry and complexity, but the real value is in the application of the interpretation. This paper divides microseismic applications into three categories, real-time, completion strategies & stimulation design, and field development. The MSM interpretation requirements for each category are documented and a comprehensive guide to properly applying these interpretations is presented. Applications issues such as determining the "effective" fracture surface area, the relationship between microseismic behavior and well performance, and fracture model calibration are addressed.There is a growing interest in advanced processing such as moment tensor inversion (MTI) and b-values to determine focal mechanisms, source parameters, and failure mechanisms associated with the microseismic events. However, the engineering application of these interpretations is not well understood. This paper includes a discussion of the applications of advanced processing results, emphasizing how the limitations and uncertainties of the processing affect the subsequent applications.