On Site Mapping of Microseismicity at Cooper Basin, Australia HDR Project by the Japanese Team

Abstract

A large scale hydraulic injection was conducted at
the Australian Hot Dry Rock site in November and
December, 2003 in order to develop a commercial
size underground heat exchanger. A Japanese
seismic team set up the seismic network and data
acquisition system, and carried out microseismic
monitoring during the period in co-operation with the
Australian teams. On-site analysis was done as an
almost real-time process by means of auto and
manual time picking. Information such as 3D
distribution of events, time-spatial growth of
seismicity, and roughly estimated magnitude were
reported simultaneously. More than 11,000 events
were located as the result of the on-site mapping. The
information from microseismicity was practically
used for planning and determination of the
appropriate hydraulic pumping program, and will be
critical to the determination of the location for the
second well.