Managing earthquakes triggered by oil production
Scientists demonstrate safer wastewater disposal method

Date:
July 28, 2021
Source:
University of California - Riverside
Summary:
A team of scientists has developed an approach to disposing
wastewater that reduces the danger of triggering an earthquake.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A team of scientists has developed an approach to disposing wastewater
that reduces the danger of triggering an earthquake.


==========================================================================
Oil production generates large volumes of wastewater, which is often
injected into the ground as a means of disposal to avoid polluting
surface waters.

However, injections have the potential to cause earthquakes.

A study documenting the method devised by a multidisciplinary team of scientists to avoid such earthquakes has been published today in the
journal Nature. Their method was tested in western Europe's largest
onshore oil field, the Val d'Agri field in southern Italy.

Hundreds of small earthquakes were detected there after field operators injected wastewater into an abandoned well in 2006.

"The earthquakes were detected within hours of injection," said James
Dietrich, study co-author and UC Riverside distinguished professor
emeritus of geophysics. "The cause and effect relationship was clear."
Wanting to learn what levels of injection are safe, the field operators convened a team from UCR, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and the University of Texas.

Dieterich took data gathered in the field and created models that
accurately reproduced seismic events observed between 1993 and 2016. Based
on studies conducted in Dieterich's laboratory, his models help explain
how a small change in the amount of stress on a fault can result in a
large change in the rate of earthquakes.

The research team then used models to forecast the effects of using three different water injection rates. They determined that a relatively low injection rate was sustainable and should not induce shaking.

Between January 2017 and June 2019, these projections were tested in the
field, and seismic activity was consistent with the predicted levels. The authors suggest that this approach can be used to manage earthquakes
generated by other activities, such as carbon sequestration.

This strategy to reduce global warming involves capturing industrial
carbon dioxide and putting it into the ground rather than the atmosphere.

"One of the big impediments to this is that gigantic volumes of
fluids injected into the ground will probably trigger earthquakes,"
Dieterich said. "How can that be managed? We've learned a little here
that may help along those lines, and for related problems like fracking." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_California_-_Riverside. Original written by Jules
Bernstein. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Bradford H. Hager, James Dieterich, Cliff Frohlich, Ruben Juanes,
Stefano
Mantica, John H. Shaw, Francesca Bottazzi, Federica Caresani,
David Castineira, Alberto Cominelli, Marco Meda, Lorenzo Osculati,
Stefania Petroselli, Andreas Plesch. A process-based approach to
understanding and managing triggered seismicity. Nature, 2021;
595 (7869): 684 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03668-z ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210728111334.htm

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