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Induced earthquakes in the development of unconventional energy resources

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Abstract

It has long been known that human activities such as waste fluid disposal and reservoir impoundment may cause earthquakes. Recently, anthropogenic activities to tackle the increasing energy demand and to address climate change issues are also reported to induce earthquakes. These activities have a common attribute in that fluids are injected and extracted underground and induce spatiotemporal changes of pore pressure and stress, which may cause slip on faults. Induced earthquakes not only pose significant impacts on seismic hazard assessment and preparation, but also raise the question to the society as how to balance the economic needs of resources development and the public’s concerns about potential environmental impacts. Here we review the observations of fluid-injection/extraction induced earthquakes, ground deformation associated with these activities, and their physical mechanisms. Furthermore, we discuss the influences of induced earthquakes on seismic hazard models, regulatory policies on these anthropogenic activities, and current development of academic, industrial and government initiatives and collaborations in order to understand this intriguing phenomenon and address associated challenges.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Teng-fong Wong and Lin Liu at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Baoshan Wang at Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration (CEA), Xuejun Qiao at Institute of Seismology, CEA, and Risheng Chu at Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, for the discussion in the early stage of this work and sharing the preliminary results on the Hutubi natural gas repository. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that significantly improve the manuscript. This work was supported by the NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme sponsored by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Grant Nos. N_CUHK418/15, N_CUHK430/16), CUHK-University of Manchester Research Fund (Grant No. 4930227), United States National Science Foundation (Grant No. OCE-1357433), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant No. STPGP 494141-16), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant Nos. KAKENHI 2624004, 26280006), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41474033), and the Summer School Program of Peking University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth System Science Programme, Faculty of Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    HongFeng Yang

  2. Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, H3A 2A7, Canada

    YaJing Liu

  3. Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, Rhode Island, 02882, USA

    Meng Wei

  4. Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, 190-8562, Japan

    JianCang Zhuang

  5. ITAG Institute of Theoretical and Applied Geophysics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    ShiYong Zhou

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  1. HongFeng Yang
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  2. YaJing Liu
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  3. Meng Wei
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  4. JianCang Zhuang
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  5. ShiYong Zhou
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Correspondence to HongFeng Yang.

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Yang, H., Liu, Y., Wei, M. et al. Induced earthquakes in the development of unconventional energy resources. Sci. China Earth Sci. 60, 1632–1644 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9063-0

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