Shallow Reverse Moderate Earthquakes in the Weiyuan Shale Gas Field, Sichuan Basin, China, Related to Hydraulic Fracturing

Abstract The Weiyuan shale gas field in the stable southern Sichuan basin, China, has experienced increasing seismicity since systematic hydraulic fracturing (HF) operations in 2015. Three Mw≥4.4 shallow earthquakes occurred in the Weiyuan area between September 2019 and February 2020, yet their seismogenic faults, rupture models, and relationship with HF are unknown. In this study, we first obtain the high-resolution coseismic deformation fields of these three events and then invert their slip distribution. The result shows that all three events are shallow high-dip reverse events under the contractional Weiyuan anticline environment with peak slips of 158, 68, and 34 cm and at depths of 4, 3, and 1.6 km, respectively. The spatial relationship between seismogenic faults, horizontal wells, as well as geological data reveals that pore-pressure diffusion due to the HF may be the main mechanism of the 8 September 2019 and the 18 December 2019 events, whereas the 16 February 2020 event may be attributed to the poroelastic stress perturbation caused by the HF. Our study highlights that HF activities and regional geological characteristics jointly influence the properties of earthquakes in the Sichuan basin.