Browsing by Author "Boroumand, Neda"

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    Microseismic Interpretation of Hydraulic Fracture Processes in Unconventional Reservoirs: Geomechanics, Numerical Simulations and Data Integration
    (2016) Boroumand, Neda; Eaton, David; Lawton, Don; Krebes, Edward; Aguilera, Roberto; Angus, Doug
    New techniques are presented to advance microseismic interpretation of the hydraulic fracture process. Numerical simulations were developed to present the majority of the claims of novelty and a few previously developed ones were modi ed to present new insights. First, two processing techniques are used for analysis of a microseismic double couple source mechanism. A time shifted hyperbolic Radon transform scheme was applied to a synthetic and a real microseismic event to obtain its lag time and spatial location. Second, a new method is developed to deal statistically with missing microseismic events that are too far from the monitoring well to be detected. This new method, b value energy correction method (MbEC), begins by unbiasing the catalogue as a function of distance and magnitude, then characterizing the frequency magnitude distribution and nally correcting for missing radiated seismic energy. The corrected energy is compared to the fracture energy to calculate seismic e ciency and the fracture energy is compared to injection energy to compute fracture e ciency. The energy correction and comparisons are useful for evaluating changes in microseismic activity. Third, a numerical algorithm is developed to analyse the energy breakdown of the hydraulic fracture process. This energy breakdown based model technique is developed by incorporating microseismic events in space. This model is able to constrain and validate the model geometry through parameter adjustments. The novelty is in the integration of microseismic observations in the numerical simulation that was developed speci cally to characterize the reservoir. Fourth, a numerical algorithm is developed that couples the multi-physics interaction between formation elasticity, fracture uid ow and mechanics equations to initiate and propagate a fracture. The novelty in this algorithm lies in using the microseismic events as the fracture propagation criteria, in time and space, for reservoir property characterization. Case studies are presented in all chapters to illustrate the applicability of each new idea.