Upcoming Webcasts
Presenter: Peter M. Duncan, PhD
Date: August 14, 2018
Title: The Future of Hydraulic Fracturing: Getting It Right at Every Stage
Description: A forward looking view on the future of unconventional field development, frac’ing and frac monitoring.
Previous Webcasts
Presenter: Alison Small & Peter M. Duncan, PhD
Date: May 22, 2018
Title: 2018 DUG Permian Tech Showcase
Description: Alison Small from Element Petroleum and Peter Duncan, President of MicroSeismic, Inc. present at the DUG Permian Conference & Expo.
Presenter: Hasan Shojaei, PhD, Reservoir Engineer
Date: March 6, 2018
Title: Estimating Production and Drainage Volume From Multiple Stacked Wells – A Permian Case Study
Description: In this webcast, we will explain how microseismic-derived permeability enhancement results are integrated with PVT, core and well-log data to build a detailed reservoir simulation model for an 8-well pad in the Permian. We will describe how individual well productivities (PIndex) are predicted and subsequently calibrated using actual production data (i.e., history matching). Then we will show how the resulting reservoir drainage patterns (DIndex) were used to evaluate wellbore spacing and completion designs.
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, VP Engineering
Date: July 18, 2017
Title: Technology in the Permian Basin: Microseismic-based Reservoir Simulation
Description: With a variety of fracture diagnostics technologies available, it is important to validate interpretations and recommendations independently. Understanding how the reservoir reacts to a particular combination of treatment parameters and optimizing the design based on those observations has been key.
In this month’s webcast, a lookback study is reviewed for a three-well pad in the Midland Basin using historic production data, well logs, PVT, and core data, as well as other available offset well data. Initial project goals included determining optimum vertical and lateral wellbore spacing as well as evaluating the completion design in terms of cluster spacing and stage length for wells landed in the Middle Spraberry, the Lower Spraberry, and the Wolfcamp A shales.
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, VP Engineering
Date: March 21, 2017
Title: Market Trends Shaping The Oil & Gas Industry
Description: In this month’s webcast, we will provide a concise overview and highlights of E&P business economics to date, the driving factors that we’ve seen over the last two years, capital expenditures, a brief overview of the M&A market, and what bankruptcies have meant for the industry. We will also take a look at international shale, in particular, Argentina, and long-term forecasts by the EIA. Finally, we will discuss MicroSeismic’s reaction and response.
Presenter: Orlando Teran, PhD, Structural Geologist
Date: January 17, 2017
Title: Assess Your Stress – Get Mohr From Your Microseismic
Description: Focal mechanisms, when computed for an entire microseismic catalogue, permit a rapid assessment of the stress conditions throughout the entire stimulated reservoir. In this talk we will present a new geomechanical workflow using focal mechanisms to accurately and unambiguously estimate SHmax. We will demonstrate the importance of SHmax in achieving more precise frac design modeling results, as well as how the microseismic data permits us to evaluate the stratigraphic variations in SHmax. Additionally, by simply using the microseismic fracture orientations and this new workflow, we will show how we can identify fracture populations likely to control fluid flow, those that required different stimulation pressures in order to contribute to flow, and the mechanical conditions that favored out-of-zone growth and reactivation of geohazards. We will further show how by integrating stimulation data, such as net wellbore pressure measurements, and geophysical logs, can better constrain our geomechanical model as well as understand the adaptive controls affecting the overall stimulated rock volume.
Presenter: Sudhendu Kashikar, VP Completions Evaluation
Date: September 20, 2016
Title: Designing More Efficient and Effective Treatment Plans Using Full Moment Tensor Analysis of Microseismic Data
Description: Moment tensors are valuable tools for interpreting microseismic data from hydraulic fracturing as they describe the dynamic geomechanical response of the earth to the hydraulic treatment. The moment tensors and the focal mechanisms derived from them are becoming increasingly more sought after as a means to help integrate microseismic data with fracture modeling, reservoir engineering, and completions optimization.
Automatic calculation of moment tensors offers a distinct advantage in that it enables fast and efficient evaluation of numerous microseismic events and their possible source mechanisms with little need for analyst intervention. This facilitates a more detailed and accurate picture of stress and resultant fracture network both spatially and temporally, along with quantification of the net pressure required for activating natural and induced fractures in the rock. Being able to determine temporal changes in the stress fields offers a look into how the treatment is changing the stress field and provides a pathway to modify and alter the treatment to generate the desired fracture complexity. Such detailed moment tensor analysis makes it possible for the completion engineer to use microseismic data in a more deterministic way so they can customize specific details of the treatment schedules and parameters such as rates, pressures and proppant loading to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of hydraulic fracturing.
Presenter: Geraldine Haas, Senior Geophysicist & Downhole Team Lead
Date: May 17, 2016
Title: PSET® Downhole: The Power of Imaging Downhole Microseismic Data
Description: Microseismic, Inc. (MSI) has developed and is currently using advanced tools to enable downhole data processing and imaging. Using the proprietary and widely-used PSET® algorithm (also used in surface processing) and moving away from p&s picking, MSI provides a more accurate and reliable downhole solution to operators. In this webcast we will cover the PSET Downhole workflow that includes receiver orientation, velocity model calibration, and microseismic event location computation, along with a brief case history.
Presenter: Dr. Orlando Teran – Structural Geologist
Date: March 22, 2016
Title: Determining the Reservoir Stress Field From Microseismic Focal Mechanisms
Description: MicroSeismic’s new AutoMTI tool calculates a discrete focal mechanism, the orientation of a fracture plane and the direction of movement, for every event, thus providing an adequate distribution of fracture plane orientations and slip vectors to perform statistically reliable stress field inversions. In this webcast, we will present our workflow on how we derive the fracture plane solutions, SHmax direction and magnitude, and how this can be used to understand the variations in the stress field throughout the reservoir during stimulation.
Presenter: Sudhendu Kashikar, VP Completions Evaluation
Date: February 8, 2016
Title: Rapid and Accurate Diagnosis of Well Performance Through Integrated Microseismic
Description: In this webcast, we will look at several case studies that demonstrate how microseismic data offers the opportunity to make early, well specific, in situ observations of the permeability through stimulation. These observations can then be turned into a more timely and robust well appraisal, significantly reducing the need for 6 to 12 months of production data before appraising the well and diagnosing performance issues.
Presenter: Peter M. Duncan, Ph.D. – Founder & CoChairman, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: January 19, 2016
Title: Seeking Real Value From Microseismic Monitoring | Early Appraisal of Unconventional Well Performance Using Microseismic Data
Description: At every stage in the life of a well, estimates of what that well will recover and how much that might be worth are of primary importance. Before the well is drilled, the subsurface team uses the best G&G data available to forecast the value of the well and justify it being drilled. As the well is being drilled we anxiously watch the logs and cuttings to get hints on whether our predictions will bear out. After completion, we watch the IP as the well unloads hoping to see numbers that validate the prediction. In reality, all these are weak and highly uncertain indicators. We have to wait for 6 to 12 months of production history to really know how the well is going to perform over its life. In the meantime, we continue to drill more wells in an area that perhaps should be downgraded, we continue to complete wells with perhaps a less than optimal design and we continue to space wells based on a drainage model that may not be correct.
Microseismic data, that is the location of the microseismic events generated as the stimulation proceeds, have been used by the completion engineers to “watch” what is happening at the reservoir and confirm that the completion is going as planned. Various methods of mapping the extent of the microseismic cloud have been used to estimate the volume of stimulated rock (SRV) as a predictor of how the well will perform. Unfortunately SRV or the propped fraction of it alone are not reliable predictors of production since the amount of permeability enhancement within the SRV and its distribution are key to effective drainage of the hydrocarbons present.
Recent work has shown that microseismic data can also provide an insitu, real-time estimate of the permeability enhancement resulting from the treatment and its distribution over the SRV. This allows for an improved appraisal of the well within days of it being completed, without waiting months for production data. The workflow has been validated with long-term history matching to production.
The workflow and its output are the subject of this webcast.
Presenter: Jon McKenna, PhD – Completions Evaluation Team Leader
Date: November 17, 2015
Title: Using Depletion-Zone Microseismicity to Understand Producing Volumes | Part 2
Description: In Part 2, the methodology for separating microseismic events into different populations is further defined. This yields insight into an observed proppant distribution associated with offset producing wells, an observed fluid and proppant-laden gel distribution on stimulated wells, and depleted zones associated with offset producing wells.
In addition, the proppant-filled discrete fracture network model is validated by demonstrating that the modeled proppant distributions are very similar to the observed proppant-distributions on both the offset producing wells and the stimulated wells.
Presenter: Jon McKenna, Completions Evaluation Team Leader
Date: October 20, 2015
Title: Using Depletion-Zone Microseismicity to Understand Producing Volumes | Part 1
Description: Microseismicity is typically used to describe the region around the wellbore directly affected by the hydraulic stimulation. However, when wellbores are treated near offset producing wells, microseismicity can illuminate areas that have already been stimulated and can reveal important details about how the offset wells were treated, where production has occurred, and where hydrocarbons may have been left behind.
In this webcast, we will explain how to use microseismicity occurring on offset producing wells to understand and describe the region around the wellbore that was propped and where production has occurred. Using this information to test calibrated proppant filled fracture models, along with fracture velocities, helps evaluate the enhanced permeability around the wellbore from stimulation.
Presenter: Alireza Agharazi, Geomechanics Engineer
Date: August 18, 2015
Title: Geomechanics of Refracturing – Part 2: An Engineering Approach to Refracturing
Description: As discussed in Part 1 of this webcast series, microseismic observations and geomechanical analysis of refracturing indicate that diverters are not effective in regulating the flow along lateral during the treatment.
Ineffective diverters and the pressure drop along the lateral, results in localized stimulation of reservoir at the heel area, leaving a major part of the well un-stimulated.
In part 2, we introduce an alternative method to address ineffective diverters and to improve the effectiveness of refracturing. This methodology is based on the stimulation of naturally fractured reservoirs by a pore pressure-driven mechanism. Proper handling of injection pressure and flow rates is a key factor in this methodology. Numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of the method in creating a uniformly stimulated rock volume along the lateral.
Presenter: Alireza Agharazi, Geomechanics Engineer
Date: July 21, 2015
Title: Geomechanics of Refracturing | Part 1: Diverters Effectiveness
Description: MicroSeismic, Inc. ran a series of numerical simulations to study the Geomechanics of Refracturing. Comparison of the simulation results with microseismic observations will be discussed, as they relate to diverter effectiveness.
This webcast will focus on two subjects:
- Evaluating the effectiveness of diverters in regulating the flow through perforations along the lateral, and
- Pressure drop along the lateral due to frictional forces
Presenter: Sudhendu Kashikar, VP Completions Evaluation
Date: June 16, 2015
Title: Improving Production Forecasting for Shale reservoirs
Description: In this month’s webcast, learn how MicroSeismic, Inc. developed a unique methodology to quantify permeability enhancement resulting from hydraulic fracturing to enable rapid reservoir simulation, production history matching and production forecasting. We will highlight how an independent operator in the Eagle Ford was able to utilize the workflow and results to rapidly and accurately forecast future production and determine optimal wellbore spacing for planned developments.
Presenter: Ganesh Murdeshwar | Vice President, MicroSeismic Canada
Date: May 21, 2015
Title: AlertArray™: Cost Effective Seismicity Monitoring to Mitigate Risk
Description: In this month’s webcast, we will discuss how the new AlertArray system works and how it is used to mitigate risk for monitoring seismicity during hydraulic fracturing and fluid injection operations.
Presenter: Karl Harris, Petroleum Engineer
Date: April 21, 2015
Title: Geohazard Avoidance: Optimizing Completions in Real-time
Description: An independent operator in the Eagle Ford believed there was a possibility that faults existed in the region and hired MicroSeismic, Inc. to help monitor during their hydraulic fracturing program. This case study will highlight how real-time microseismic analysis provided geohazard detectability, which helped the operator reduce completions costs and optimize production.
Presenter: Sudhendu Kashikar – VP Completions Evaluation, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: March 17, 2015
Title: Refrac’ing: How microseismic can help improve results
Description: Learn how microseismic can help accelerate the rate of production and enhance ultimate recovery from old wells, at a significantly lower investment compared to drilling a new well.
Presenter: Dr. Peter Duncan | Founder & Co-Chairman, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: February 17, 2015
Title: PSET® Downhole – The New Standard | A Permian Case Study
Description: Dr. Peter Duncan will address the pros and cons of downhole P&S picking and downhole imaging, and how each method works. He will also highlight the benefits and differentiators of PSET® Downhole and how the downhole imaging technique was successfully used in the Permian.
Presenter: Dr. Peter Duncan | Founder & Co-Chairman, MicroSeismic, Inc
Date: January 20, 2015
Title: MicroSeismic: When Every Penny Counts
Description: Founder Peter Duncan will present his views on how microseismic monitoring can help reduce costs in this environment of low commodity prices where every penny counts.
Presenter: Asal Rahimi Zeynal, Petroleum Engineer
Date: October 21, 2014
Title: Introducing PermIndex™ – Reservoir Permeability Calculation
Description: A crucial piece of information a reservoir engineers always want to know about a reservoir is the permeability, because this controls how fast the gas and/or oil will flow to the well. This month’s webcast will highlight MicroSeismic’s most recent Completions Evaluation Service – PermIndex, which calculates seismicity-based reservoir permeability coupled with effective drainage volume determination in order to provide operators with a stage-by-stage indication of production potential given early estimates of each stage’s productivity. This information can then provide operators with information they need in order to improve production forecasting and estimated ultimate recovery (EUR).
Presenter: Ganesh Murdeshwar | Vice President , MicroSeismic Canada
Date: November 18, 2014
Title: A Business Case for Seismicity Monitoring | A Decision Framework
Description: The issue of seismicity occurring as a result of oil and gas development activities, especially from hydraulic fracturing, has been a concern for some time. Operators can help minimize the risks by monitoring for seismicity and taking action to mitigate, but the decision as to whether or not to monitor is not always obvious.
We present a framework that could be adapted by industry to help make better and more rigorous decisions about seismicity monitoring.
Presenter: Jon McKenna, PhD., Completions Evaluation Team Lead
Date: September 16, 2014
Title: Introducing FracRx™ – Diagnostic Tools to Optimize Completions
Description: Find out what’s really happening when you frac your well with FracRx, MicroSeismic’s latest technology to help operators optimize production on every well in real-time. By evaluating and optimizing the performance and the treatment of each well, FracRx will help operators increase asset value, maximize well spacing, and improve ultimate recovery. Learn how it works and what it means for you by watching this month’s webcast!
Presenter: Mike Mueller, VP Technology & Development
Date: August 19, 2014
Title: Advanced Real-Time Analysis
Description: MicroSeismic continues to push the boundaries of real-time passive seismic services. The industry leading real-time provider, MicroSeismic now offers this service with enhanced, advanced anisotropic velocity calibration to improve event locations, automated moment tensor inversions or source mechanism determination to provide real-time rock failure and stress state characterization and advanced event editing to allow only true positives into your microseismic pointset. These features mean you are able to use your microseismic results at the time of completion for advanced completions evaluation with confidence.
Presenter: Kash Kashikar, VP Completions Evaluation
Date: July 22, 2014
Title: Completions Evaluation: Optimizing Completions & Recovery – A Case Study
Description: Don’t miss the opportunity to find out how to optimize your recovery and completions! Watch this month’s webcast to understand how MicroSeismic was able to help a client evaluate vertical extent, determine optimum wellbore spacing and stage spacing, calibrate earth models, compare completions options and much more!
Presenter: Cherie Telker, Geologist & Mike Mueller, VP Technology Development – MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: November 19, 2013 at 10AM CST
Title: The Variable Nature of Shale Plays & How Monitoring Can Help
Description: In comparison to conventional reservoirs, shale plays are highly variable in nature resulting in uncertainty around profitability. In this webcast, we discuss shale variability and show how using a near-surface BuriedArray™ for frac monitoring provides the necessary information for operators to optimize production. We discuss ideal well spacing, number of stages needed, production prediction and more. Monitoring every frac means turning the unconventional into the conventional.
Presenter: John Detring, Geophysicist, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: July 23, 2013 at 10AM CDT
Title: Using Microseismicity to Understand Subsurface Fracture Systems and Increase the Effectiveness of Completions: Eagle Ford Shale, TX
Description: This month’s webcast focuses on utilizing microseismicity to ascertain an understanding of the subsurface fracture networks and how this information can increase the effectiveness of completions. This presentation is a case study from within the Eagle Ford formation.
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, Completions Evaluation Team Leader
Date: June 17, 2014
Title: Completions Evaluation in the Eagle Ford Shale – A Case Study
Description: Microseismic monitoring provides important information to characterize the reservoir and drive field development, wellbore completion, and treatment design strategies. This month’s webcast will discuss how MicroSeismic, Inc.’s Completions Evaluation Services played an essential role in determining sophisticated wellbore spacing in the Eagle Ford shale.
Presenter: Mary Ellison, Geologiest III, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: May 20, 2014
Title: Comparison of Fracture Planes in the Utica and Marcellus Shales
Description: Operators seeking to produce oil, natural gas or condensates in the various shale plays need to understand their natural and induced fracture patterns in order to optimize production and completion strategies. In this month’s webcast will discuss how fracture orientations are derived from focal mechanisms and the regional stress regime.
Presenter: Asal Zeynal, Petroleum Engineer & Mike Mueller, VP Development
Date: April 22, 2014 at 10AM CDT
Title: Microseismic Correlation to Production
Description: The application of microseismic-based hydraulic fracture monitoring over the past decade of shale oil and gas development has reached the point where thousands of wells and tens of thousands of stages have been monitored. With this microseismic monitoring of a large number of wells, and sufficient time since initial production for many of the monitored wells, it is now possible to compare the microseismic results to multi-year production data across all of the active shale oil and gas trends. The correlations are based on using the stimulated rock volumes computed from microseismic pointsets and production data available from common reporting agencies. Overall these correlations are very promising with coefficients above 0.8 for all the prominent North American shale trends.
Presenter: Julia Kurpan, Sr. Geophysicist & Mike Mueller, VP Development, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: March 18, 2014 at 10AM CDT
Title: Downhole Monitoring with EventPick®
Description: EventPick technology provides an independent evalution of well stimulation results in areas less suitable for surface-based microseismic acquisition. Final results determined using the proprietary EventPick processing technology provides operators with the fracture geometry and azimuth, discrete fracture network characterization, estimations of stimulated reservoir volume, and recommendations for completions optimization. An in depth look at EventPick will give insight on how operators can determine well spacing, improve fluid and proppant selection, alter pressure pumping schedules, avoid geohazards, and delineate reservoir boundaries.
Presenter: Jonathan McKenna, Research Geologist, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: February 18, 2014 at 10AM CDT
Title: Next Generation Discrete Fracture Network
Description: Effective propped fracture half-lengths during hydraulic fracturing are difficult to quantify, new modeling techniques must be developed to understand the spatial extent of proppant-filled fractures and improve estimates of proppant distribution within a formation. In this webcast, we will show you how the distribution of propped and unpropped fractures can be statistically analyzed to determine the Productive Stimulated Rock Volume (Productive-SRVTM) and constrain key field development parameters such as wellbore and stage spacing as well as vertical containment of proppant placement.
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, Completions Evaluation Team Lead, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: January 21, 2014
Title: Hydrocarbon Production and Microseismic Monitoring – Treatment Optimization in the Marcellus Shale
Description: This month’s webcast features an integrated analysis of hydraulic fracturing treatments in the Marcellus Shale. The analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between reservoir geology, wellbore completion, stimulation design, and microseismic data. Carl Neuhaus will discuss how the findings were used to evaluate the correlation between hydrocarbon production and microseismic results and how the initial production related to engineering parameters and/or reservoir properties.
Presenter: Jane Ling, Geophysicist, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: October 22, 2013 at 10AM CST
Title: The Illumination of Natural Fractures and Faults of the Muskwa Shale Play in Northeastern British Columbia
Description: In this month’s webcast, we will present a case study presenting the natural fracture and faulting characteristics of the Muskwa Shale play in Northeastern British Columbia. The microseismic data for this study was recorded by a surface array during the hydraulic fracturing for 9 horizontal wells, 8 of them located within the Muskwa formation. Specific wells in this pad will be discussed illustrating different geologic characteristics, stimulated fracture geometry, and the performance of the completion including focal mechanism and b-values analysis.
Presenter: Mike Thornton, Ph.D. – Chief Technology Officer, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: September 17, 2013 at 10AM CDT
Title: PSET 5.0: High Definition Surface Microseismic
Description: Microseismic’s CTO, Mike Thornton, discusses the latest release of PSET 5.0. The latest release allows for high definition z-resolution across the wellbore and controlled amplitude processing to allow for improved magnitudes and well to well, basin to basin comparisons.
Tune in to learn what’s new and how it can help your company increase production and reduce costs.
This webcast is not yet available for registration. Please check back soon.
Presenter: Peter M. Duncan, Ph.D. – Founder and CEO, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: August 20, 2013 at 10AM CDT
Title: Advanced Microseismic Analysis for Enhanced Reservoir Characterization
Description: The analysis of microseismic monitoring data can make a contribution to reservoir management that extends well beyond the design of the best completion procedures.
Sound intriguing? Tune in as Peter Duncan, Ph.D. shares new insights on how an old technology is being re-engineered to provide insights on structure, stress and reservoir dynamics.
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, Petroleum Engineer at MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: June 17, 2013 at 10AM CDT
Title: Productive-SRV: Proppant Placement and Production Estimation from Microseismic Data
Description: This month’s webcast focuses on how using microseismic data allows users to build an event magnitude calibrated DFN, taking into account the seismic energy of the events, rock properties, and the pumped treatment. Evaluating proppant placement in the calibrated DFN allows you to discern between the part of the SRV that contributes to production in the long term, and the part of the reservoir that was affected by the treatment but may not be hydraulically connected over a longer period of time. Then obtaining reservoir characteristics from microseismic data gives you an idea of permeability that was created with the stimulation in order to evaluate drainage volume from where you are producing. From here you are able to estimate production, as well as refine field development in terms of wellbore spacing. Considering other treatment data, such as pressure and rate, we show how you can make additional recommendations on stage spacing and how to optimize your fluid system based on the signature of a proprietary treatment analysis plot.
Presenter: Indy Chakrabarti, VP of Strategic Development, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Date: May 21, 2013 at 10:00 AM CST
Title: Next Generation Downhole Microseismic Monitoring with EventPick® Technology
Description: This short webinar is an introduction and overview of microseismic acquisition and processing techniques and considerations, with a special focus on the new EventPick first arrival picking technology. The session will review optimal scenarios for surface and downhole microseismic solutions in hydraulic fracture mapping, reservoir monitoring and seismicity detection scenarios. In addition, a brief description of the differing microseismic results and uses from each of these techniques will be discussed, including source mechanism characterization and discrete fracture network generation.
Presenter: Mark McClure, Assistant Professor of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering at University of Texas at Austin
Date: April 23, 2013 at 10:00 AM CST
Title: Coupled Fluid Flow and Geomechanical Modeling of Unconventional Hydraulic Stimulation: Processing Affecting Recovery
Description: During hydraulic stimulation in unconventional oil and gas, newly forming and preexisting fractures interact to generate complex fracture networks. We developed a computational model, CFRAC, that couples fluid flow and the stresses induced by fracture deformation in large, complex discrete fracture networks. Modeling these processes with discrete fracture networks is useful because the stresses induced by fracture propagation and deformation are especially heterogeneous and depend on the relative locations and orientations of neighboring fractures. The model also has the capability to describe friction evolution on fractures, allowing it to directly describe the processes giving rise to microseismicity. In this talk, applications to practical problems will be given. Different mechanisms that encourage or inhibit development of productive fracture networks will be summarized. The relationship between microseismicity and deformation will also be discussed.
Title: A New Look at Surface and Downhole Microseismic Positional Uncertainty: A Statistics Based Approach
Date: March 26, 2013 at 10AM CST
Presenter: Michael Thornton, CTO MicroSeismic, Inc.
Summary:
This month’s webcast focuses on the presumption that the two competing microseismic imaging techniques in use today appear at first to be very dissimilar. Downhole microseismic locations are determined from P & S wave travel-time matching, much like traditional earthquake seismology, while surface microseismic imaging is more like pre-stack depth migration of reflection seismic. However, if one considers both techniques as maximum likelihood estimators (MLE), it is possible to show that the two are in fact quite similar. Moreover, the MLE framework provides a basis to compare the two methods in terms of the uncertainties in location estimates and sensitivity to velocity uncertainty.
Title: Improving Event Location Accuracy with Anisotropic Velocity Models
Date: February 19, 2013 at 10:00AM CST
Presenter: Carl Neuhaus, Petroleum Engineer, MicroSeismic, Inc.
Summary:
This month’s webcast focuses on the application of an anisotropic velocity model in determining microseismic event locations from surface-acquired passive seismic data. The Thomsen parameters ε and δ were determined to accurately locate calibration shots to their known location. Hydraulic fracture events were then imaged and compared to their locations derived from processing incorporating an isotropic velocity model. We will show that the anisotropic model improved the absolute average error in calibration shot positioning, in all directions, by almost 30% and the events imaged depicted a more dense and confined zone of microseismic activity.
Microseismic monitoring is attracting great interest due to the application of passive seismic to shale play completion activities and the successful expansion of the method from downhole to surface and near-surface acquisition geometries. Fundamental to this application is the science behind the interpretations: The inherent capabilities and limitations of downhole, surface and near-surface recording systems and the processing and imaging applications enabled by these recordings must be appreciated to understand the results. These considerations inform issues such as: microseismic event detectability and position uncertainty; the characterization of geological features; sensitivity to hydraulic fracturing methods; rock failure modes; and well to pad to field-wide implications of large scale ‘horizontally drill and hydraulically fracture’ development programs. Ultimately interpretation workflows determine event pointsets, modeling of discrete fracture networks and calculation of stimulated rock volumes. As microseismic monitoring matures understanding the relationship of recording geometry, imaging capability and interpretation workflows will fuel expanded utilization.
Microseismic event location or position resolution and uncertainty remains one of the most critical aspects of passive seismic for the user community. Understanding the inherent capabilities, limitations and drivers for event locations from downhole, surface and near-surface microseismic acquisition geometries is required to have confidence with ‘beyond the dots’ microseismic applications such as hydrofracture length, height and stimulated rock volume calculations. In this webinar, these capabilities, limitations and drivers are reviewed for both the downhole and the surface acquisition methods.
This webcast focuses on an integrative analysis of hydraulic fracture treatments conducted in the Marcellus Shale. The presentation determines how various factors related to the specific reservoir geology in the Marcellus and to what extent the variability of hydraulic fracture treatments impacted the microseismic results. It analyzes stress changes in the reservoir indicated by focal mechanisms to help explain the asymmetry of the microseismicity about the wellbore. Finally, the initial production results are compared to reservoir and engineering parameters to determine if the variability in the microseismic results is due to engineering differences or to spatially-varying reservoir properties.
