Speaker: Doug Angus, ESG Solutions
Authors: Doug Angus, Ted Urbancic, Gisela Viegas, Katie Bosman, ESG Solutions
and Francois Tremblay, University of Leeds

In this paper we integrate hydraulic fracture and geomechanical modelling with microseismic data to quantify deformation and stress field evolution as a predictive tool, as well as calibration and microseismic workflow. Our approach utilizes simulated fractures (i.e., fracture displacement) as well as moment tensor solutions to represent localized discrete rupture zones. The geomechanical algorithm evaluates the Green’s functions for each rupture and subsequently calculates the co- and post-seismic deformation using linear superposition. These data are then combined with DPA to define an integrated view of the reservoir. We show that the integration of fracture models with geomechanical simulation forecast stress and strain fields consistent with observed microseismicity for a hydraulic fracture experiment. We compare dynamic parameter analysis from the observed microseismic data with geomechanical predictions from elastic and visco-elastic models and note the sensitivity of the dynamic parameter behavior to the geomechanical Earth model; visco-elastic models better represent the dynamic or collective behavior of the microseismicity whereas the elastic models are sufficient to forecast potential volumes and timing of microseismicity.

Speaker Biography: Doug Angus. ESG Solutions
Advisor, ITG Geomechanics at ESG, has over 10 years of experience developing and applying new technology in the field of seismic geo-mechanics to address reservoir production and injection challenges, specifically to improve reservoir characterization and monitoring. He has pioneered practical approaches to integrate microseismicity, time-lapse seismology, rock physics, surface deformation, and coupled fluid-flow and geo-mechanical modelling. He has published up to 50 journal papers and up to 40 conference abstracts on a diverse range of problems, spanning theoretical, exploration and engineering seismology as well as hydrocarbon, carbon storage and engineering scale problems. He has been heavily involved in R&D efforts that are heavily multi-disciplinary, involving the integration of seismology, rock and petro-physics, hydro-mechanics and geodesy. He was previously Associate Professor of Seismic Geomechanics at the University of Leeds, UK.

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