FracStar®

Real-Time Surface Monitoring

MicroSeismic’s FracStar Surface Monitoring uses an easily deployed, retrievable, surface-located, radial geophone array to effectively monitor long laterals and pad drilling over large geographic areas. Each array is customized for the operator’s specific area of interest, ensuring the highest quality dataset is obtained.

The combined effect of the FracStar array’s wide aperture and PSET®-based microseismic data processing provides vital information about how the stimulation-induced fractures interact with the reservoir’s natural fracture networks. This insight allows operators to reduce their completion costs quickly, while increasing their per-well recovery from subsequent wells in the area.

FracStar arrays have been successfully deployed in most North American active unconventional resource plays.

Array Design

The FracStar retrievable array typically consists of 10 to 12 arms arranged radially around the wellbore, and covers 5–15 square miles (12–40 square kilometers), delivering full event imaging throughout the well site and beyond. Geophones are spaced throughout the stations on these arms and can number in the thousands. Arm placement does not need to be linear and will often be deviated to meet permitting requirements or geographic constraints. Stations can be deployed using standard cabling technology or wirelessly to minimize field operation time, reducing cost. A powerful processing unit is deployed onsite, in the MicroStar recording acquisition truck to process the data in real time.

The FracStar array is a cost effective means to monitor your well treatment and observe reservoir stimulation.Arrays are capable of imaging events down to about −3.0 moment magnitude. MicroSeismic’s proprietary processing techniques make our solutions highly resilient to surface noise sources, such as pumping operations, ground traffic, rain, and high winds.

Key Benefits:

• Saves money by eliminating costly monitoring wells
• Consistently delivers high-accuracy event location in X, Y, and Z over the entire monitored volume
• Fracture orientations are revealed by source mechanisms through PSET processing
• Real-time monitoring available
• Uses PSET unique beamforming processing technology
• Directly maps local stress orientations
• Rapid array deployment with minimal surface and environmental disturbance during acquisition

For more information about our FracStar Real-Time Surface Monitoring, please contact MicroSeismic.