Integrating Mechanical Earth Models, Surface Seismic, and Microseismic Field Observations at the Illinois Basin - Decatur Project

AbstractThe Illinois Basin - Decatur Project (IBDP) is a carbon dioxide (CO2) storage project that has a goal to inject 1 million tonnes of CO2 over a three-year period. As a part of managing the CO2 storage, several measurement, monitoring, characterization, data integration, and modelling technologies originally developed for hydrocarbon exploration and production applications were adapted for use on this project. Real-time continuous measurement of microseismicity in the project area showed that these events consistently cluster instead of being randomly located, suggesting the pre-existence of rock imperfections in the injection site. Geomechanics and finite element models that duplicate the location of observed small amplitude microseismic clusters with injection show a high correlation with measured events locations. This work advances the direct use of surface seismic data to constrain mechanical model assumptions pertaining to features associated with injection-induced microseismicity