Reply to comment by Flewelling and Sharma on “Hydraulic fracturing in faulted sedimentary basins: Numerical simulation of potential contamination of shallow aquifers over long time scales”

Abstract

We welcome and appreciate the comments of Flewelling and Sharma [2015, hereafter referred to as FS] which give us the opportunity to clarify and discuss important aspects of our study [Gassiat et al., 2013, hereafter referred to as G13]. FS discuss some important details of the model development and implementation of G13. The main thrust of FS is that parts of the model geometry, parameters and boundary conditions are inappropriate, and model calibration is insufficient for a specific shale gas basin, the St. Lawrence basin. However, the work of G13 was fundamentally a parametric study, using data from multiple shale gas basins to define model geometry, parameters and boundary conditions, and the objective was not to robustly calibrate results to a specific shale gas basin. Below we systematically address the specific comments of FS about the limitations of G13, which provide us an opportunity to further elaborate on the already extensive discussion of such limitations in G13 [paragraphs 36–47].