Seismicity

From Open Energy Information

Seismic Monitoring


Utah FORGE Wells.jpg

Seismic Network The goal for the seismic network is (1) to monitor sub-magnitude zero events to understand the development of the EGS geothermal reservoir and (2) to monitor the larger seismicity to inform the understanding of seismic hazard and risk in the immediate area and to inform a traffic light system during operations. EGS reservoir monitoring at Utah FORGE is accomplished using seismic instrumentation of deep boreholes and local monitoring at Utah FORGE is accomplished using a mix of surface and shallow borehole instrumentation with both broadband and accelerometer sensors.

Deep Borehole Monitoring

Downhole seismic monitoring activities have been comprised of planning, quantitative modeling, and contracting for two stages of deep sensor emplacement. These sensors are to go into the three deep vertical wells 58-32, 56-32 and 78B-32. The first of these activities was associated with the three-stage stimulation near the toe of injector well 16A(78)-32 that was completed in mid-April, 2022. The borehole sensors are eight-level (8L), three component (3C) digital geophone strings manufactured by Avalon Sciences Ltd (ASL) (Geochain model) with levels separated by 100 feet. These sensors incorporate active solid-state cooling to keep internal temperatures to within 165C when the external temperatures may reach 210C. Two of the Geochains will be operated by subcontractor Schlumberger Inc. in wells 58-32 and 56-32, while the third will be operated by the maker Avalon at well 78B-32 under supervision of Dr. Ben Dyer of Geo Energie Suisse (GES), with which Utah FORGE has formalized a cooperative research arrangement.

Local Monitoring

The initial Utah FORGE seismic network consisted of five surface broadband stations. Four were located close to the Utah FORGE site and the fifth south of Milford. The station south of Milford was designed to close an azimuthal gap in monitoring of the Utah FORGE region. There were also three strong-motion stations integrated into the network, and a ~300 m borehole was instrumented in 2019, station FORK. During the reporting period, the network was upgraded to reflect the developed seismic monitoring plan and ISMP. The basis of the seismic monitoring plan was to have a subset of stations at a distance of ~3 km for depth control and a second set of stations at ~8 km for epicentral control. Specific upgrades during the reporting period include relocating the strong-motion station at Milford High School due to construction issues, decommissioning surface stations FOR3 and FOR4, installing broadband surface stations FOR5, FOR6, FOR7 and FOR8, and installing broadband and accelerometer seismic instrumentation in three shallow (~30 m) boreholes, FSB1, FSB2, and FSB3.

Utah FORGE Seismic Stations.jpg


For more information and data please use the links below:

Seismic Mitigation Plan

  1. 2023 Induced Seismicity Mitigation Plan This is the updated (2023) Utah FORGE Phase 3B seismic mitigation plan covering the general Utah FORGE area. The report includes descriptions of seismic hazards, seismic risks, plans for seismic monitoring and mitigation, and plans for communicating with stakeholders and the public.
  2. Seismic Risk Trafic Light System (Version 2) This is a report detailing the Trafic Light System used to mitigate seismic hazards, which is critical for this project and others like it, where well stimulation is used.

General Seismicity Data

  1. Utah Seismograph Stations This is a website containing Utah seismograph stations. It is maintained at the University of Utah. This site contains data relevant to the Utah FORGE project.
  2. USGS Earthquake Information and Data This site contains information and data related to Utah earthquakes. It is maintained by the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. This site contains information relevant to the Utah FORGE project.
  3. Ground Motion Study Report Paragon Geophysical contracted Urban Seismic Specialists to conduct a ground motion study, on the Forge 3D project located near in Milford Utah. The test was conducted to measure the effects of the vibrator array on a pipeline owned by Kern River. Testing began November 22nd and was completed on November 23rd. Demobilizing was completed on November 24, 2017
  4. Site Earthquake Animation This is a .kml earthquake animation covering the period of 1991 - 2011 for the Utah Milford FORGE site. It displays seismic events using different sized bubbles according to magnitude. It covers the general Utah FORGE area (large shaded rectangle) with the final site displayed as a smaller polygon along the northwestern margin. Earthquakes are subdivided into clusters and the time, date, and magnitude of each event is included. Nearby seismic stations are symbolized with triangles. This was created by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations (UUSS).
  5. Seismograph Station Information and Data This goes to a link that leads to the University of Utah Seismograph Stations website Utah FORGE seismograph stations page. This page contains a location map and description of the Utah FORGE seismograph stations and other related information. Additionally, data can be downloaded for each station by range of dates as a CSV file. Please note that stations located in well 68A(78)-32 are named FORK on this site.
  6. Microseismic Events This archive contains Excel spreadsheets containing microseismic events detected in the study area during Utah FORGE Phase 2C through March 9th, 2020. The Readme file included that describes the meaning of the abbreviations used as field headers in the spreadsheets. Additionally, there is a .dat (text) file containing additional location data and .txt file with field descriptions for the data in the .dat file.
  7. Earthquake Catalog This is the set of earthquake catalogs developed for the Utah FORGE project covering December of 2016 through March of 2018 (updated again in July 2021).
  8. Downhole Geophone Seismic Data: This is downhole geophone data collected by Schlumberger in Utah FORGE deep seismic monitoring wells 58-32 and 56-32. Please note that this site also contains other seismic data as well as node locations.
  9. Seismic Activity from April, 2019 This dataset contains seismic event detections acquired using the 151 Nodal geophones deployed at the Utah FORGE site in April 2019.
  10. Seismic Velocity Models, February 2021 This dataset contains a map, showing the Utah FORGE seismic stations, and seismic velocity model data. There are 61 1-D velocity models which are in a compressed TAR file. A paper is referenced at the end of this description which discusses the use of these data in 3D modelling.
  11. FSB4, FSB5, & FSB6 Shallow Seismic Well Locations: This is a PDF file generated by Woolsey Land Surveying, P.C containing the surveyed locations, as located, in Latitude and Longitude degrees, of the Utah FORGE FSB4, FSB5, & FSB6 shallow seismic well locations.
  12. Well, Well Pad, and Seismic Station GPS Coordinates: This is a CSV spreadsheet containing UTM and Latitude and Longitude coordinates and elevations for Wells 78-32, 78B-32, 56-32, 58-32, 68-32, and 16A(78)-32 and seismic stations BOR1, BOR2, BOR3, FOR1, FOR2, FOR5, FOR6, FOR 7, FOR8, FORK, FORU, FORW, and FORB.
  13. Borehole Seismic Sensors and Well Trajectories This is a link to a webpage with spreadsheets containing seismic borehole sensor locations and well trajectories for wells 56-32, 58-32, 78-32, 78B-32.
  14. This is a report on a Data Foundation for Real-Time Identification of Microseismic Events This is a technical report for the Probabilistic Estimation of Seismic Response Using Physics Informed Recurrent Neural Networks project. The report describes the process of extracting events from the borehole seismic sensors. To be effective once deployed, the process must be done in real-time. A summary of the methodology is as follows: bandpass filter, shift (via cross-correlation) and stack signals, envelope function, peak detection, transfer function from amplitude to magnitude, creation of magnitude-frequency distribution, and finally, extract MFD "a" and "b" parameters. The datasets used in this work are linked below and include the raw waveform data and the seismic event catalog used for magnitude calibration, also hosted on the GDR.

Well 58-32 Stimulation Seismicity Data

  1. Microseismic Monitoring Geophone Data from Well 78-32 This submission includes geophone data collected by Schlumberger from Utah FORGE Phase 2C seismic monitoring well 78-32 during stimulation testing of well 58-32. The data are hosted by the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) at the University of Utah, and a script for downloading the data is attached.
  2. High-Resolution DAS Microseismic Data from Well 78-32 This regards a high-resolution DAS microseismic dataset produced by Silixa from Utah FORGE Phase 2C seismic monitoring well 78-32 during stimulation testing of well 58-32. It is a very large dataset and as such it is currently not directly available on GDR. However, it is available for download from the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) at the University of Utah using the shell script below. Additional survey information and tips for running the script are available in the attached downloadable Word Document file.
  3. Seismicity Associated with the April 2019 Well 58-32 Stimulation This catalog describes the seismicity associated with the 2019 stimulation at Utah FORGE. Containing both matched-filter detections (Dzubay et al., 2022) and Schlumberger-recorded events (detected with a 12-level geophone string), the final combined catalog contains a total of 534 microseismic events spanning -2.0 Mw to -0.1 Mw. Users may differentiate between SLB and MF events using the fact that SLB event magnitudes are recorded to a higher level of precision (MF mags determined using relative amplitude ratios). Users should be wary of locations and depths (measured from sea level) for MF events, as all detections were assigned the same locations as their template events.

Well 16A(78)-32 Stimulation Seismicity Data

For the GES datasets please note that: 1.The time is in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time); 2.The location category for the detected events is L2 msmx; and 3. The coordinates are UTM Zone 12 North, Datum NAD 1983.

  1. Well 16A(78)-32 2022 Stimulation Silixa Microseismic Report: This is the Utah FORGE well 16A(78)-32 stimulation microseismic detection and location report from Silixa LLC. The stimulation was accomplished during April 2022.
  2. Seismic Data from the Well 16A(78)-32 Stimulation: This dataset includes earthquake catalogues for the three stages of the 2022 well 16A(78)-32 stimulation provided by Geo Energie Suisse (GES). This data is from July 2022.
  3. Seismic Data from the Well 16A(78)-32 Stimulation April, 2022 This dataset includes earthquake catalogues for the three stages of the 2022 well 16A(78)-32 stimulation provided by Geo Energie Suisse. Events in these catalogues have been visually inspected. There are additional events of lower signal to noise that were automatically detected. Those events will require additional analysis and processing.
  4. Revised Seismic Data from the April 2022 well 16A(78)-32 Stimulation These are revised catalogs, related to the April 2022 well 16A(78)-32 stimulation (phases 1,2, & 3), provided by Geo Energie Suisse (GES) that include additional events at the start of Stage 1 and some tidying up of some locations. These catalogs also include events for additional events that were auto-located to provide a larger dataset for statistical analyses, like b-value calculations. The actual auto-locations have been removed to prevent spurious location plots being created. This data is from November 2022.
  5. 16A(78)-32 stimulation DAS Seismic Data 2022 This is a link to the website where DAS seismic data, collected from wells 78-32 and 78B-32 during the Utah FORGE 2022 stimulation, is now available for download. The data can be accessed at "Well 16A78-32 2022 Stimulation Seismicity Data" link in the submission under the Silixa heading. The page includes surface acquisition nodal datasets, downhole geophone data, and Silixa fiber data. Raw seismic stimulation data and the scripts to process this data is under the Silixa heading.
  6. DAS Seismic Data 2022: This is a link to the website where DAS seismic data, collected from wells 78-32 and 78B-32 during the 2022 well 16A(78)-32 stimulation, is available for download.
  7. Utah FORGE: 2022 Well Stimulation Seismicity Data Including SGY Data -- Updated 4/2023. This is a link to the Utah FORGE seismic data distribution site hosted by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations. The data was collected from downhole geophone strings in wells 56-32, 58-32 and 78B-32 during the 2022 stimulation of well 16A(78)-32. This dataset, which was updated in April 2023, now contains SGY formatted data.
  8. Microseismic Event Catalogues from the Well 16A(78)-32 Stimulation in April, 2022 This dataset includes three microseismic event catalogues from the three stages of the stimulation in April 2022 of the well 16A(78)-32 derived by Geo Energie Suisse. Each spreadsheet contains source times, xy location, depth, and seismic moment magnitude. An animation of the order in which the sequence evolved is provided with respect to wells 16A(78)-32 and the later drilled well 16B-32. These catalogues are an update of the preliminary versions in doi:10.15121/1879450

Well 16A(78)-32 and 16B(78)-32 Stimulation and Circulation Microseismic Data

  1. Utah FORGE: Microseismic Surface Network Catalogs for Wells 16A(78)-32 and 16B(78)-32 Stimulation 2022 and Circulation 2023 This dataset consists of consistent microseismic surface network catalogs for Utah FORGE (Stimulation 2022 and Circulation 2023). Circulation experiments in wells 16A(78)-32 and 16B(78)-32 near-surface seismic monitoring revealed fracture growth after shut-in. The zipped file contains a ReadMe text file and a .csv file.
  2. DAS Microseismic Catalog, 16A/B Circulation Test, 2023 This preliminary data archive includes the relocated microseismic event catalog, 1D velocity model, and methods report from DAS acquisition conducted during the 16A/16B circulation test (July 19th and 20th, 2023). The methods report describes all processing steps which include real-time event detection, hierarchical clustering, joint velocity/hypocenter inversion, and relocation. The resulting work is accepted and will be presented at IMAGE 2024. This dataset was acquired by the FOGMORE R&D project (Fiber Optic MOnitoring for Reservoir Evolution), Utah FORGE R&D Project 3-2417.
  3. GES Well 16A(78)-32 and Well 16B(78)-32 Stimulation Seismic Event Catalogs This dataset contains seismic event catalogs from the hydraulic stimulation of wells 16A(78)-32 and 16B(78)-32 at the Utah FORGE site in April 2024. The data was collected by Geo Energy Suisse (GES) using a variety of seismic monitoring technologies, including 3-component (3C) geophones and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems. These technologies were deployed across several locations, including wells 16A, 16B, and Delano-1, with sensor arrays at multiple depths to capture microseismic activity during the stimulations. The catalogs provide both real-time and manually checked seismic event locations, with detailed parameters such as trigger conditions, velocity models, and data acquisition settings. The dataset includes information on the stimulation stages, event rates, and hydraulic injection conditions for each well, with a report detailing the data acquisition configuration and seismic event location methodologies. Users will need to reference the included report for a complete understanding of the sensor network, data processing techniques, and accuracy considerations.

Composite 3D Seismic Velocity Model

  1. Composite 3D Seismic Velocity Model February, 2024 This seismic velocity model is in NonLinLoc format (slow_len), which is readily usable in NonLinLoc (see accompanying documentation). Other model formats and versions of the model can be produced using the Python script provided with this data set. The setup of the model is described in detail in the accompanying pdf documentation. After Utah FORGE circulation experiments near-surface seismic monitoring revealed fracture growth after shut-in.


Overview Geology Water Chemistry/Ground Water Geophysics Earth/Fracture Modelling

Seismicity GIS Data/Maps R&D Projects Wells 16A&16B Stimulation Reports

Well 58-32 Well 78-32 Well 78B-32 Well 68-32 Well 56-32 Well 16A(78)-32 Well 16B(78)-32 Wells General


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