California Project Seismicity in the oil and gas fields

1. California Project • Seismicity in the oil and gas fields Tayeb A. Tafti University of Southern California July 2, 2013

2. Outline • Research Team Structure • Problem Statement • Extracting Data from public entities websites • Preliminary observation • Seismicity Statistics and Prediction Studies • Correlating seismicity with field operation parameters

3. Problems… • Find seismicity that related to oil field operations? • What will be future forecast for seismicity in the area? • What are the field operation parameters that correlates with seismicity?

4. Extracting Data from public entities websites

5. Preliminaryobservation • Faults map from USGS

6. Preliminaryobservation • Hydraulic fracturing jobs from fracfocus • Data only from January 2011 • Zoom-in is Limited in some areas with high density wells • Limited reported data • Job date • Injected Volume • Lat, Lon, Depth • Chemical composition of injectate • About 923 reported jobs in this area after Jan 2011, Pdf files should be extracted for each and digitally stored • Out of them 533 information for wells digitally stored in USC database

7. Preliminaryobservation • Seismic Stations

8. Preliminaryobservation • 10180 recorded events in this area from 1980 to June 2013 • 3 Events more than 5; 1988,1993,2005: Largest 5.7 • Seismicity in the area

9. EarthquakeFacts 32 10 1

10. EarthquakeFacts California Seismicity • From 1980-2013 : Number of Earthquakes Worldwide • Frequency of Occurrence of Earthquakes Based on observations since 1900., USGS website

11. Preliminaryobservation • 939 recorded events in this area from 1980 to June 2013 • Seismicity in the area • 3 Events more than 4: • 1980(24.4 km);1985(9.9);1988(unknown depth in catalogue, relocated in USC); Two of them relates to Faults network in Elk Reserves.

12. Preliminaryobservation All Events Events less than 6.0 km 519 events;15 events greater than 3 No events with Magnitude 4 or above 10180 events outside area; 179 greater than 3 939 events inside area; 33 greater than 3

13. Seismicity Statistics and Prediction Studies

14. Preliminaryobservation Events less than 6.0 km & Outside of fault zone All Events

15. b-valueAnalysis current state of art Gutenberg and Richter, 1944 Many authors reported b = 1 as a universal constant for earthquakes in general (Frohlich, 1993; Kagan, 1999) Higher b-values may occur in lower stress regimes with smaller magnitude (Zoback, 2007, Goebel 2012, Spada 2013, Tafti 2013) Southern California field data Schorlemmer et al. (2005) Zoback, 2007

16. b- value analysis

17. b-valueAnalysis of induced seismicity b=1.25 b=1 Not Probable

18. Correlating seismicity with field operation parameters

19. Initial Steps

20. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3

21. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3

22. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield • No events after 2011, except one in 1992 all occurred in 1988

23. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3 • No reported events after 2011 from Hydraulic Fracturing

24. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3 • No reported events after 2011 from Hydraulic Fracturing, seismicity may related to Hydraulic fracturing

25. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3 • No reported events after 2011 from Hydraulic Fracturing

26. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3 • No reported events after 2011 from Hydraulic Fracturing, all occurred in 1988

27. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield Magnitude 1 2 3 Magnitude 1 2 3 • No reported events after 2011 from Hydraulic Fracturing, occurred in 1988

28. Seismicityclusteringforeachfield • No events from any field activity such as cyclic steam, water inj., or Hydraulic fracturing

29. Thankyou