Microseismic mapping - the geological factor

摘要

Monitoring microseismicity during reservoir production and injection is an area of growing interest. The unconventional resource play has taken off like gangbusters in North America and is beginning to attract attention in Europe and the Middle East. These reservoirs often have permeabilities so low that the only thing tighter in the well is the casing, hence the need for hydraulic stimulation. Stimulations of this sort have been practiced for at least 60 years, but only with the advent of microseismic monitoring have we been able to get a realistic picture of how the rocks are actually responding to the tremendous pressures, fluid volumes, and proppant volumes that are being pumped down the well. These pictures have offered up many surprises. While not all the surprises have been good news (geology can be more complex than we would like) the value proposition of microseismic frac monitoring has been broadly recognized such that the number of jobs monitored has increased by an order of magnitude in the last five years.