Reactivated Seismogenic Faults and Earthquake Source Mechanisms in the Snyder Area of Texas

Abstract

Abstract Stretching across New Mexico and Texas of the United States, the greater Permian basin is composed of two subunits—the Delaware and the Midland basins. Induced seismicity in the greater Permian basin has significantly increased since 2008, which has revealed previously unmapped seismogenic structures in several geographic regions. Among them, the Snyder area of northwest Texas has a long history of oil and gas activities, resulting in a higher rate of induced seismicity. In this study, we investigated these previously unknown seismogenic structures using three main approaches: (1) relocated and delineated seismicity, (2) performed waveform moment tensor inversion to determine earthquake source mechanisms, as well as (3) conducted stress inversion to assess the stress state. The results show that the overall depth range of seismicity is 0–5.5 km and concentrated in a range of 2–3 km below mean sea level, in the top portion of the crystalline basement. As we have determined 297 source mechanisms, their collective pattern presents a mix of strike-slip and normal faulting, suggesting an extensional strain field at the edge of the Midland basin. We have identified nine significant seismogenic episodes by distinctive increases of seismic moment release in 2017–March 2024. The results also demonstrate a temporal variation of b-value spanning across the seismogenic episodes, associated with the progression of fault reactivation initiated by fluid injection.