Gas fields and large shallow seismogenic reverse faults are anticorrelated

Abstract

We investigated the spatial relationships among 18 known seismogenic faults and 1651 wells drilled for gas exploitation in the main hydrocarbon province of northern-central Italy, a unique dataset worldwide. We adopted a GIS approach and a robust statistical technique, and found a significant anticorrelation between the location of productive wells and of the considered seismogenic faults, which are often overlain or encircled by unproductive wells. Our observations suggest that (a) earthquake ruptures encompassing much of the upper crust may cause gas to be lost to the atmosphere over geological time, and that (b) reservoirs underlain by smaller or aseismic faults are more likely to be intact. These findings, which are of inherently global relevance, have crucial implications for future hydrocarbon exploitation, for assessing the seismic–aseismic behaviour of large reverse faults, and for the public acceptance of underground energy and CO2 storage facilities—a pillar of future low carbon energy systems—in tectonically active areas.

An Insight into Underground Hydrogen Storage in Italy

“…In a final step, the identified aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon fields were uploaded to a Geographical Information System (GIS) map, where we also plotted the location of potential sources of earthquakes larger than Magnitude 5.5 included in the Database of Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS) of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) [55]. Two studies that addressed the anti-correlation between the occurrence of gas reservoirs and large seismogenic faults in Italy [56,57] found that large earthquakes cause large slips over large faults compared to smaller events where the associated slip is too small to potentially affect reservoir integrity. Therefore, sites located over or near these larger seismogenic sources were not considered as favourable for UHS.…”

Pemanfaatan Sistem Informasi Geografis Berbasis Web Dalam Meningkatkan Akurasi Informasi Terkait Rekam Jejak Sumur Minyak Dan Gas Bumi Di Pulau Madura

“…Penggunaan webgis saat ini telah berkembang untuk berbagai sektor seperti pemanfaatannya dalam pembangunan wilayah seperti smart city (Hari Ginardi et al, 2017), pendidikan, integrasi basis data biota laut (Agurto et al, 2018), integrasi dengan sistem cloud computing (De Lázaro Torres et al, 2017;Fortunato et al, 2017;Helmi et al, 2018;Piragnolo et al, 2021;Sciacca et al, 2022;Xia et al, 2015), kesehatan (Barik et al, 2019;Mooney & Juhász, 2020), bibliografi dalam penelitian (Howell et al, 2019), manajemen mitigasi kebencanaan (Capolupo et al, 2021;Fauzia et al, 2021;Feng et al, 2012;Franceschini et al, 2022;Gang et al, 2016;Gebreegziabher et al, 2021;Xianfu et al, 2012), forecasting (Fortunato et al, 2017), pariwisata (Klug et al, 2012), minyak dan gas bumi (Abdunaser, 2020;Khan & Hasan, 2020;Li, 2020;Russell et al, 2015;Valensise et al, 2022), hingga dalam memberikan solusi kebijakan dalam penentuan lokasi pembangkit listrik power to gas (La Guardia et al, 2021).Penggunaan perangkat lunak dalam bidang geospasial sangat disarankan sesuai dengan amanat UU No 11 Tahun 2011 tentang Informasi Geospasial pasal 31 yang menyatakan bahwa pengolahan data geospasial dan informasi geospasial dilakukan dengan perangkat lunak yang berlisensi dan/atau bersifat bebas dan terbuka (Mary Fargher, 2018;Serrano-Estrada et al, 2021).…”

An unusually productive microearthquake sequence brings new insights to the buried active thrust system of Montello (Southeastern Alps, Northern Italy)

“…Initially considered a seismic gap (Burrato et al, 2008) within a single, continuous deformation front, since no major event occurred between the two strong historical events of 1695 and 1873 (see Figure 1), the MT was then segmented into smaller hypothetical faults; the potential sources of major earthquakes are now interpreted split in two sub-parallel fronts (see sources labeled ITCS060, ITCS105 and ITIS101 in the different versions of the database DISS, see Data Availability Section). Several authors now suggest a potential aseismic role of MT, considering the microseismic record (Romano et al, 2019), geodetic/seismic modeling (Barba et al, 2013), or analogs with other anticlines hosting productive gas reservoirs (Valensise et al, 2022).…”