The horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing implementations in shale reservoirs have created a renaissance in economically viable production from nano-permeability source rocks. This technology also initiated an extensive unconventional resource exploration effort in over sea with knowledge transfer for unlocking the vast hydrocarbon resources in the United States and overseas. However, these exploration technologies have been raised significant concern on potential for surface and groundwater contamination and air pollution issues as well as induced seismicity for geohazard aspect unconventional operations around the globe.
In this study, the results of the impacts of the stress alteration and behavior of chemical potential of fracturing fluids under stress have been presented using a coupled geomechanics, fluid flow and physicochemical modeling. The model outcomes have been implemented using examples from gas shale and a shale oil reservoir by integrating the field and laboratory data. The role of various fracturing fluids on the microseismic monitoring was illustrated by the triaxial deformation and failure measurements using preserved core samples from a shale reservoir with the multistage fracturing operations and microseismic data as well as analyzing the production data. The advancements made on data acquisition and interpretation techniques for microseismic monitoring were utilized to understand the parameters controlling the complexities in the reservoir, It was shown that microseismic event scatter is a strong function of the compatibility of the native fluids and injected fracturing fluids and using the statistical analysis of the microseismic data in combination with the geomechanics properties, the sources of the microseismic events have been identified in order to monitor any potential fault reactivation and hazardous conditions that could generate substantial environmental risk.
