A storage and enhanced coalbed methane (CO2-ECBM) test will store up to 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide in a stacked coal reservoir in southwest Virginia. The test involves two phases of CO2 injection operations. Phase I was conducted from July 2, 2015 to April 15, 2016, and injected a total of 10, 601 tons of CO2. After a reservoir soaking period of seven months, Phase II is scheduled to begin Fall 2016. The design of the monitoring program for the test considered several site-specific factors, including a unique reservoir geometry, challenging surface terrain, simultaneous CBM production activities which complicate the ability to attribute signals to sources. A multi-scale approach to the monitoring design incorporated technologies deployed over different, overlapping spatial and temporal scales selected for the monitoring program include dedicated observation wells, CO2 injection operations monitoring, reservoir pressure and temperature monitoring, gas and formation water composition from offset wells tracer studies, borehole liquid level measurement, microseismic monitoring, surface deformation measurement, and various well logs and tests. Integrated interpretations of monitoring results from Phase I of the test have characterized enhanced permeability, geomechanical variation with depth, and dynamic reservoir injectivity. Results have also led to the development of recommended injection strategy for CO2-ECBM operations. The work presented here describes the development of the monitoring program, including design considerations and rationales for selected technologies, and presents monitoring results and interpretations from Phase I of the test. / Ph. D.

Understanding economic success of unconventional production from shales requires an explanation of the relationship between induced seismicity and hydraulic fracturing. This thesis deals with observing and analyzing synthetic and real microseismic monitoring data acquired during hydraulic fracturing. The thesis is based on observation and analyses of source mechanisms of induced microseismic events that have recently become regularly inverted and interpreted in the oil and gas industry. The results of analyses are interpreted with the geomechanical model of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and induced seismicity. The study of source mechanisms starts with detailed analyses of spatial distribution of full moment tensor inversion stability. It was mapped based on synthetically computed condition numbers in the vicinity of different monitoring arrays including dense arrays at the surface and sparse arrays with sensors in the boreholes. Stability of inversion was tested under several conditions, mainly dependency on size and geometry of monitoring array and level of noise in the data. In this part of the thesis it is shown that dense surface arrays may provide very stable inversion of source mechanisms which may be interpreted. The study shows that an increasing percentage of non-shear...