Probabilistic Evaluation of Susceptibility to Fluid Injection-Induced Seismicity Based on Statistics of Fracture Criticality

Abstract

Fault reactivation and associated microseismicity pose a potential threat to industrial processes involving fluid injection into the subsurface. In this research, fracture criticality, defined as the gradient of critical fluid pressure change to trigger seismicity (Δpc/h), is proposed as a novel reservoir depth-independent metric of fault slip susceptibility. Based on statistics of the fracture criticality, a probabilistic evaluation framework for susceptibility to injection-induced seismicity was developed by integrating seismic observations and hydrogeological modelling of fluid injection operations for faulted reservoirs. The proposed seismic susceptibility evaluation method considers the injection-driven fluid pressure increase, the variability of fracture criticality, and regional fracture density. Utilising this methodology, the probabilistic distribution of fracture criticality was obtained to evaluate the potential for injection-induced seismicity in both fault and off-fault zones at the Hellisheiði geothermal site, Iceland. It has been found that the fracture criticality within both fault and off-fault zones shows natural variability (mostly ranging between 0.001 and 2.0 bar/km), and that fault zones tend to be characterised by larger fracture criticality values than the off-faut zones. Fracture criticality values estimated within each zone roughly follow a Gaussian distribution. Fault zones around five geothermal fluid re-injection wells at the site were estimated to have relatively high probability of seismic event occurrence, and these regions experienced high levels of induced seismicity over the microseismic monitoring period. The seismotectonic state estimated for each zone is generally consistent with the forecasted susceptibility to seismicity based on statistics of fracture criticality.