Agile microseismic monitoring for geothermal

The area surrounding the injection point was home to over 20 private landowners, meaning each landowner had to be individually consulted and educated about the project, technology, and impact this would have on the landowner’s land. This incurred significantly more time than initially planned and resulted in the survey layout having to be modified to ensure livestock and farming operations were not disrupted.

The survey had to align with the operator’s operational plans for injection to capture the baseline data as well as the monitoring data, post-injection. Confirmation of the injection start date was received with only 3 weeks’ notice. This required a joint effort between Oxford and STRYDE to ensure the required inventory was delivered quickly and training was provided in time for the survey start date.

Budget constraints meant there was a tight budget available to cover the seismic receiver inventory required to conduct the survey. If STRYDE’s low-cost technology solution and flexible commercial model had not been available, the University would have had to complete additional grant applications to fund the project. This would have been incompatible with the well operator’s timeline and so the opportunity to acquire the survey would have been missed.

Using the world’s smallest land seismic sensors to acquire this survey made conversations with private landowners easier. Stakeholders were amazed by how small the equipment was and happily granted permission to access and deploy instruments on their land, once they understood how non-intrusive the equipment and survey would be.

Providing access to STRYDE’s seismic sensors within 2 weeks ensured the team at Oxford was able to align with Eden Geothermal’ s operational plans for injection, and meant they were able to successfully capture the baseline data prior to injection and monitor the subsurface thereafter.

Given the tight project timeline, the deployment of the nodes needed to be extremely fast paced. The node’s compact weight and size, combined with stakeless deployment operations enabled by STRYDE’s Navigator Tablet and App, meant that even with a small deployment team 441 nodes could be deployed by foot in just 2.5 days.

It was important to have the nodes in the ground for as long as possible to effectively identify any seismic events that occurred pre, during and post-injection. STRYDE’s autonomous Nodes™ can reliably record continuous data 24 hours a day for 28 days. This enabled seismicity monitoring data to be recorded by the team at Oxford over the entire lifecycle of the geothermal well stimulation operations.

The STRYDE system has transformed the price point of land seismic equipment relative to the cost of conventional seismic instruments. Furthermore, the ability to deploy the miniature nodes quickly meant planning, preparation, and logistical overheads were greatly reduced, unlocking further cost savings and efficiency gains.

The simplicity of the STRYDE system means that it is extremely easy to use and is even accessible to people with no previous seismic experience. The Oxford team required only a couple of hours of virtual training to onboard them to the system prior to deployment operations commencing. This allowed the team to start up efficiently and effectively, as was required to comply with the tight operational schedule for fluid injection.