Feasibility studies towards a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for hydrocarbon extraction and wastewater injection activities

Abstract

In recent years, great efforts have been devoted to the study of the human-induced earthquakes, owing to the effect that these earthquakes can have in terms of seismic hazard. In the past, different authors proposed classification schemes for distinguishing different mechanisms for fluid-induced seismicity generation (see, e.g. McGarr 2000). For example, it has been suggested that when the anthropic activities are responsible for a very small part of the stress field perturbations, the seismic events can be classified as “triggered”, while when the anthropic activities are responsible for the most of stress perturbations driving to the event occurrence, it can be classified as “induced”. In practice, we can rather consider that it may exist a continuum of cases depending on both the characteristics of technological operations and the local stress state.