Estimation of The Source Mechanisms of Microseismic Events from a Barnett Shale play

dc.contributor.advisorChesnokov, Evgeni M.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberCastagna, John P.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberKouri, Donald J.
dc.creatorOsakwe, Emmanuel Olisejindu
dc.date.accessioned2013-12-02T22:41:37Z
dc.date.available2013-12-02T22:41:37Z
dc.date.createdMay 2013
dc.date.issued2013-05
dc.date.updated2013-12-02T22:41:44Z
dc.description.abstractThe waveforms generated during hydraulic fracturing in unconventional oil and gas reservoirs contain information about the nature of the failures that gave rise to the observed wave fields. Inverting for the moment tensor has become an important way of gaining understanding of the fracturing process. Microseismic events recorded off of a Barnett shale play were first subjected to power spectra density analysis in order to determine the frequency content of the events. The analysis revealed that the peak energy of the first arrivals was in range 100 – 800 Hz, and no signal of significant energy was found beyond 900 Hz. The inversion for the moment tensor of about 100 of these events, which were of good enough quality, was then carried out. The moment tensor revealed that the source mechanisms of most of the events were predominantly shear failures, with a few of the events being of non-shear-type failure like compensated linear vector dipoles (CLVD). The condition number of the sensitivity matrix used for the inversion was somewhat high, even for a constrained inversion. The fact that the data were recorded from an array of geophones in a single borehole might be the reason for the unstable inversion, since data recorded from a single borehole cannot resolve all the six independent elements of the moment tensor.
dc.description.departmentEarth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10657/461
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectSource mechanism
dc.subjectMicroseismic
dc.subjectMoment Tensor
dc.subject.lcshGeophysics
dc.subject.lcshMicroseisms
dc.titleEstimation of The Source Mechanisms of Microseismic Events from a Barnett Shale play
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
thesis.degree.departmentEarth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineGeophysics
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Science

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