InSAR Reveals Complex Surface Deformation Patterns Over an 80,000 km2 Oil-Producing Region in the Permian Basin

Abstract

Here we used Sentinel-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data acquired between November 2014 to January 2019 to map how the basin's surface has deformed in response to fluid injection and extraction. While our stacking approach has low complexity, its accuracy increases with the Sentinel-1 data volume. With an automated outlier removal algorithm, we achieved ∼2 mm/year accuracy across the basin in the presence of up to ±15 cm tropospheric noise. We observed numerous subsidence and uplift features near active production and disposal wells, with the maximum deformation rate occurring in 2018 when production peaked. The most important deformation signatures are linear patterns that extend tens of kilometers near Pecos, TX, where a cluster of increased seismic events was cataloged by the Texas Seismological Network (TexNet). Our elastic modeling results demonstrate that fluid extraction and dip slip along normal faults are potential causes for the observed seismicity and deformation patterns.