The development of organic‐rich, low‐permeability formations for hydrocarbon production requires the use of unconventional techniques such as multiwell pad drilling of horizontal wells and massive multistage hydraulic‐fracturing stimulations. However, proliferation of these unconventional development methods has been linked to localized cases of fault reactivation during or shortly after hydraulic fracturing. In the Duvernay formation, located in Alberta, Canada, induced seismicity from hydraulic fracturing has occurred on nearly vertical strike‐slip faults that are difficult to detect with conventional seismic exploration methods. In such cases, faults may only be discernible from seismic events with precise and accurate locations, which generally requires dense seismic monitoring arrays deployed near the stimulated wells. In this study, we introduce a new, semiautomated workflow for processing passive seismic data from a dense array and then integrate it with a 3D seismic dataset to characterize seismicity clusters related to hydraulic fracturing and pre‐existing faults. The reactivated faults inferred from the distribution of the microseismic events directly overlie a system of incised, middle Devonian channels below the Duvernay formation observed in time slices extracted from the 3D seismic data. The channel system exhibits a set of lateral offsets, interpreted as ancient strike‐slip fault displacements, the detection of which is further enhanced by use of a similarity attribute calculated from the 3D seismic data. Taken together, integrated interpretation of induced seismicity and 3D seismic data support a model of a regional left‐lateral strike‐slip fault system that was active during the middle Devonian and reactivated in a reverse sense (right‐lateral strike slip) during hydraulic‐fracturing operations.

中文翻译：

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加拿大阿尔伯塔省多级水力压裂激励过程中的自动微震处理和诱导地震的综合解释

要开发富含有机物，低渗透性的油气层，就需要使用非常规技术，例如水平井的多孔垫钻井和大规模的多级水力压裂增产措施。然而，这些非常规开发方法的扩散与水力压裂期间或之后不久的断层再活化的局部情况有关。在加拿大艾伯塔省的Duvernay地层中，水力压裂引起的地震活动发生在几乎垂直的走滑断层上，而传统的地震勘探方法很难探测到该断层。在这种情况下，只能从具有精确位置的地震事件中识别出断层，这通常需要在受压井附近部署密集的地震监测阵列。在这个研究中，我们引入了一种新的半自动化工作流程，用于处理密集阵列中的被动地震数据，然后将其与3D地震数据集集成，以表征与水力压裂和先前存在的断层有关的地震活动性群集。由微地震事件的分布推断出的重新激活的断层直接覆盖了在从3D地震数据中提取的时间片中观察到的Duvernay地层以下切开的中泥盆纪河道系统。通道系统表现出一组横向偏移，被解释为古老的走滑断层位移，通过使用根据3D地震数据计算出的相似性属性，可以进一步增强对这种位移的检测。在一起