Abstract
Microseismic mapping's primary limitation is its viewing distance which is affected by noise, attenuation, and the intrinsic size of the source event. In the Rocky Mountains the required viewing distances are often less than typical offset-well spacings, making accurate mapping difficult in many fields. A new approach to improving microseismic mapping capabilities is to digitally stack the signals from separate adjacent receivers to obtain noise cancellation. This approach requires large numbers of receivers and fast telemetry rates to obtain the necessary data. An experiment has been conducted in the Uintah basin with a 12 level receiver array in which 3 of the 12 levels consisted of triple receiver stacks. The improvement in the signal quality consists of reduced noise, improved hodogram linearity, and clearer phase arrivals. The subsequent microseismic maps using stacked data are both more accurate and contain more events that can be analyzed.
