Nature Communications (Aug 2021)

Seismicity at the Castor gas reservoir driven by pore pressure diffusion and asperities loading

  • Simone Cesca,
  • Daniel Stich,
  • Francesco Grigoli,
  • Alessandro Vuan,
  • José Ángel López-Comino,
  • Peter Niemz,
  • Estefanía Blanch,
  • Torsten Dahm,
  • William L. Ellsworth

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24949-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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The 2013 Castor seismic sequence, offshore Spain, is a rare example of seismicity induced by gas storage operations. Here we show that early seismicity marked the progressive failure of a fault in response to pore pressure diffusion, while later larger earthquakes resulted by the failure of loaded asperities.