Passive Seismic Monitoring of Reservoirs: A Case Study From Oman
Passive Seismic Monitoring of Reservoirs: A Case Study From Oman
Passive Seismic Monitoring of Reservoirs: A Case Study From Oman
Introduction
The passive monitoring of microseismic events can
provide an inexpensive and effective means of monitoring spatial and temporal variations in reservoir properties. Those microearthquakes will occur naturally because
of tectonic stresses but also can be induced through exploitation activities such as hydraulic stimulation, enhanced petroleum recovery, and fluid extraction. Such
monitoring offers insights into the dynamic state of stress
in a reservoir invaluable information for developing
effective strategies for drilling, injection, and production
programs.
Although microseismic monitoring has been used to
study geothermal fields since the 1970s, the oil industry
started to realize its potential only recently. Microseismic
monitoring was relatively uncommon in oil fields 10 years
ago, but it is now fairly commonplace in monitoring the
hydraulic stimulation of fractures, for example. The processing of such data is quite different from approaches
used in conventional reflection seismology. In fact, the
techniques used are more akin to those used in conventional earthquake seismology.
The use of microseismic data can be divided into two
broad categories: (1) the study of the source itself and (2)
imaging of the surrounding medium. Sudden stress release on faults and fractures will generate elastic waves
that will propagate into the surrounding medium. The first
step in any microseismicity study is to locate those events
as accurately as possible. Their locations and how they
migrate in time can be used to image fault planes, to infer
fault reactivation, and to monitor the propagation of perturbations to the stress field. That can be important in detecting compartmentalization in reservoirs, assessing
caprock integrity, and monitoring injection fronts. Directional variations in the pattern of energy release at
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Source locations
Figure 1. Event locations for the Oman data set. Red stars
mark surface location of the recording boreholes. (a) Dashed
lines that trend northeast-southwest mark large graben faults
that transect the field. Blue symbols mark located events from
a two-week period, and orange symbols mark large events
from another week of data. (b) Green cubes show sensor
locations in each of the five boreholes, pink and black
symbols show the event locations in three dimensions, and
blue and orange symbols show the locations projected onto
the base of the map.
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not unexpected. The observed thrusting in the Fiqa caprock (with a significant strike-slip component) and in the
Natih A reservoir is believed to be related to subsidence
and deformation because reverse fault mechanisms are
expected above compacting zones (Segall, 1989). The highest potential for compaction is the chalky Natih zone,
where soft and heterogeneous units are present and pressure is reduced because of gas depletion. In addition, the
faulting regime appears to be related to lithology because
both shale caprocks (Fiqa and Nahr Umr) show significant strike-slip components.
The fault-plane solutions also can be used to predict
the stress field in the four horizons, assuming that maximum, intermediate, and minimum stress orientations are
parallel to the P- (pressure), B- (null), and T- (tension)
axes, respectively. Al-Anboori et al. (2006a) show that
the P-axis is predominantly horizontal in Fiqa and Natih
A, subhorizontal in Nahr Umr, and subvertical in Shuaiba.
The maximum stress direction therefore is predicted to be
subhorizontal in the Fiqa, Natih A, and Nahr Umr and
subvertical in the Shuaiba. However, the subhorizontal
P-axis in Fiqa, Natih A, and Nahr Umr varies greatly in
azimuth, rendering estimation of maximum stress azimuth difficult.
In Natih A, Nahr Umr, and Shuaiba, subvertical stress
is more constrained and is predicted to represent minimum, intermediate, and maximum stress, respectively.
shear-wave splitting as having been caused by an orthorhombic anisotropy resulting from superposition of vertical fractures on a mud rock with a simple transversely
isotropic symmetry. They observe temporal variations in
the magnitude of the shear-wave splitting during the twomonth period of the experiment (Figure 4). Despite that
provocative result, the experiment was too short in duration to determine whether temporal variations were caused
by production and/or tidal effects. Careful comparison
with production data and geomechanical reservoir models
is needed to understand such effects better.
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The Oman data set has yielded nearly 2500 measurements of shear-wave splitting, but only 400 of them produced reliable results. The highest values of anisotropy (as
much as 10%) occur in the fractured upper parts of the
carbonate gas reservoir, whereas the smallest values (~1%)
occur in the lower, nonproducing, unfractured parts of the
same formation (Figure 5). The Fiqa Formation shows
moderate amounts of anisotropy (35%). Interestingly, the
anisotropy also seems to be controlled by proximity to the
large border faults, the largest magnitudes lying southeast
of the easternmost graben fault and the lowest lying in the
region between the two faults.
Care must be taken in interpreting the results of shearwave splitting from such data. Figure 6 illustrates the
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Figure 6. Variations in P-wave velocities and shear-wave splitting plotted on upper-hemisphere projections. The center of the
hemisphere corresponds to vertical wave propagation, whereas the perimeter of the hemisphere shows azimuthal variations in
horizontal velocities (normally those in the bedding plane). (a) Maximum and minimum P-wave velocity and P-wave anisotropy
100 t (Vmax Vmin)/Vave also are given below each hemisphere. (b) and (c) show variations in shear-wave splitting on a lowerhemisphere projection. Shear-wave splitting is expressed as a percent and is defined as 100 t (Vsfast Vsslow)/Vsave for a given
direction of wave propagation. (b) Maximum and minimum splitting are given below the hemispheres. (c) Ticks on the hemispheres show polarizations of the leading (fast) shear wave for a given direction of wave propagation. The top row shows results
for rock where anisotropy is controlled by microcrystal alignment (see details in Kendall et al., 2007). The bottom row shows
anisotropy in the same rock, but vertically aligned cracks, oriented left to right across the page, are superimposed on the intrinsic
crystal anisotropy. The cracks do not significantly change the magnitude of the anisotropy, only the symmetry of the anisotropy.
The uncracked sample has a nearly vertical transverse isotropy symmetry, whereas the cracked sample has a nearly orthorhombic
symmetry.
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Frequency-dependent
shear-wave splitting
In many reservoirs, fracture orientation, density,
size, and connectivity control reservoir production.
Studies of source mechanisms and shear-wave splitting
provide insights into fracture orientation and density but
offer little information about fracture size and connectivity. Work by Chapman and coworkers (e.g., Maultzsch
et al., 2003) has shown that the frequency dependence
of shear-wave splitting can be very sensitive to those
parameters.
At low seismic frequencies, a material with aligned
inclusions will behave like a homogeneous anisotropic
medium, but at higher frequencies, the inclusions will
behave as discrete scatterers. Poroelastic effects are more
subtle. For example, aligned fluid-filled fractures in a
porous medium will exhibit frequency-dependent anisotropy. At high frequencies, the inclusions will be isolated
and the effective anisotropy will be smaller, whereas at
low frequencies, the inclusions effectively are interconnected and the anisotropy will be larger.
Microseismic data are typically rich in frequency
content, making them ideal for studies of frequencydependent wave phenomena, such as Q estimation. The
frequency content of the Oman data set is somewhat variable with depth and lithology but is generally between 10
and 400 Hz. The P-waves have higher frequency content
than the S-waves.
Al-Anboori et al. (2006b) describe the analysis of frequency-dependent shear-wave splitting in the Oman data
set. Data are filtered with a one-octave passband (i.e., a
constant ratio of high to low frequencies of 2). Then the
splitting parameters are estimated for each frequency band.
The results reveal lithology-dependent variability in the
nature of frequency-dependent shear-wave splitting.
Figure 8 shows the results for the Fiqa Shale and
Natih A carbonate, including a best-fit inversion for fracture size based on the Chapman (2003) model. Results for
events confined to the Natih A carbonate formation show
a clear and fairly consistent pattern of frequency-dependent shear-wave splitting. Results confined to the Fiqa
Shale Formation show no evidence of frequency-dependent shear-wave splitting. The Chapman (2003) model
that best fits the results for the Natih A Formation suggest
that the anisotropy is caused by cracks or fractures that
have an average length of approximately 2 m and high
fracture density of 0.07 to 0.23, as might be expected for
a reservoir with hydrocarbon production facilitated primarily by fractures.
In contrast, results for the Fiqa suggest that the anisotropy is caused by fine-scale cracks less than 1 mm in size
with a moderate fracture density of 0.03 to 0.05, as might
be expected for a caprock that is acting as a seal for the
reservoir. Al-Anboori et al. (2006a), who explore the robustness of those results by using a grid search over misfit
between model parameters (fracture size and density),
find that those parameters are constrained well.
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Figure 8. Analysis of frequency-dependent shear-wave splitting in (a) events confined to the Fiqa Formation and (b) events
confined to the Natih A Formation. Data measurements are shown with errors as black dots. The splitting magnitude is
converted to percentage of anisotropy, assuming anisotropy is distributed evenly along the raypath. Results for the best-fitting
crack model based on the poroelastic model of Chapman (2003) are shown as a gray line. The best-fit fracture length and crack
density are indicated in the top right of each diagram.
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