Seismicity during and after stimulation of a 6.1 km deep enhanced geothermal system in Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

In this study, we present a high-resolution dataset of seismicity framing the stimulation campaign of a 6.1 km deep enhanced geothermal system (EGS) in the Helsinki suburban area and discuss the complexity of fracture network development. Within the St1 Deep Heat project, 18 160 m3 of water was injected over 49 d in summer 2018. The seismicity was monitored by a seismic network of near-surface borehole sensors framing the EGS site in combination with a multi-level geophone array located at ≥ 2 km of depth. We expand the original catalog of Kwiatek et al. (2019), including detected seismic events and earthquakes that occurred 2 months after the end of injection, totaling 61 163 events. We relocated events of the catalog with moment magnitudes between Mw −0.5 and Mw 1.9 using the double-difference technique and a new velocity model derived from a post-stimulation vertical seismic profiling (VSP) campaign. The analysis of the fault network development at a reservoir depth of 4.5–7 km is one primary focus of this study. To achieve this, we investigate 191 focal mechanisms of the induced seismicity using a cross-correlation-based technique. Our results indicate that seismicity occurred in three spatially separated clusters centered around the injection well. We observe a spatiotemporal migration of the seismicity during the stimulation starting from the injection well in the northwest–southeast (NW–SE) direction and in the northeast (NE) direction towards greater depth. The spatial evolution of the cumulative seismic moment, the distribution of events with Mw≥1, and the fault plane orientations of focal mechanisms indicate an active network of at least three NW–SE- to NNW–SSE-oriented permeable zones, which is interpreted to be responsible for the migration of seismic activity away from the injection well. Fault plane solutions of the best-constrained focal mechanisms and results for the local stress field orientation indicate a reverse faulting regime and suggest that seismic slip occurred on a sub-parallel network of pre-existing weak fractures favorably oriented with the stress field, striking NNW–SEE with a dip of 45∘ ENE parallel to the injection well.