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

The 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.