DAS Dataset and Processing Results for Microseismic Events Recorded During the 2024 Stimulations at the Utah FORGE Site

Abstract

We present a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) dataset recorded during stimulation operations conducted in April 2024 at the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (Utah FORGE) site. The DAS data were recorded from three wells, one of them the production well 16B, part of the Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) at Utah FORGE. Although stimulation stages took place in both the injection well 16A and the production well 16B of the EGS doublet, the DAS dataset corresponds only to stimulation stages in well 16A. Cable damage and high noise levels during the 16B stimulation stages precluded analysis of this data. We accompany the dataset with processing results that include the calibration of a 3D velocity model, event locations, and moment magnitudes of the detected seismicity. Furthermore, we compare our processing outputs with other similar independent results estimated using downhole and surface arrays of geophones and seismometers. Our comparisons report a fourfold increase in reliable locations and magnitudes in the DAS catalog. We expect that the dataset will be useful to other investigators in advancing the understanding of the EGS at Utah FORGE, and that our processing results could serve as a point of comparison to others testing and developing new methods for the processing of DAS microseismic data.