The Groundbreaking Experiment in Earthquake Control at Rangely, Colorado, Revisited
Name
byrne_etal_grl_2020.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
6.09 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
13c395212c4b8a55f5739fe79cc5470f
Author(s)
Byrne, H
Silva, JA
Plesch, A
Juanes, R
Shaw, JH
Date Issued
May 2020
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Byrne, H, Silva, JA, Plesch, A, Juanes, R and Shaw, JH. 2020. "The Groundbreaking Experiment in Earthquake Control at Rangely, Colorado, Revisited." Geophysical Research Letters, 47 (11).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Earthquakes caused by human activities are a growing societal concern. A pioneering study of induced seismicity in the 1970s involved cooperation between the U.S. Geological Survey and Chevron, Inc., to adjust operations in the Rangely oil field, Colorado, to initiate and control earthquakes. Here we revisit this experiment using coupled flow and geomechanical modeling to determine the physical mechanisms that caused these earthquakes and investigate the strength and state of stress acting on the fault that sourced them. The controlled nature of the Rangely experiment, combined with data from decades of field operations, presents a unique opportunity to understand the phenomenon of induced seismicity in ways that can be applied to manage these risks.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088257
