Geothermal resources of the Texas Gulf Coast: environmental concerns arising from the production and disposal of geothermal waters. Geological circular 76-7

Analysis of ecological effects of geopressured-geothermal resource development. Geopressured-geothermal technical paper No. 4

“…Rates calculated by Gustavson and Kreitler (1976) for various time intervals in the production history of the subsiding Chocolate Bayou oil field, Brazoria County, Texas, indicate fluctuations of up to 600 percent between two intervals. There may also be a time lag between a pressure decline, the onset of compaction, and subsidence, as postdated by Atherton et al (1976, v. 1).…”

“…With this method, the overall behavior of the geopressuredreservoir andits overburden is taken into account without attempting to quantify the details of the contributing interactions. This method was used by Gustavson and Kreitler (1976) in their study of t h e Armstrong geothermal fairway in South Texas. The methodis simple and does not fail to account for major patterns cf subsidence in the coastal region.…”

“…Therefore, the analysis of drilling impacts will be applied to production, and methock to prevent such effects will be inuestigated. In addition, normal oduction may result in such widespread effects as subsidence and fault activation r Gustavson and Kreitler, 1976). The potential for such effects and methods for measuring and predicting them will be analyzed.…”

“…Effects of fault activation. Producible geopressured geothermal reservoirs along the Texas coast will most ofien be found within fault blocks (Gustavson and Kreitler, 1976). Fault activation at some production sites is, for this reason, quite possible.…”