Investigation of regional seismicity before and after hydraulic fracturing in the Horn River Basin, northeast British Columbia

We systematically re-analyzed historical seismograms to verify the existence of background seismicity in the Horn River Basin of northeast British Columbia before the start of regional shale gas development. We also carefully relocated local earthquakes that occurred between December 2006 and December 2011 to delineate their spatiotemporal relationship with hydraulic fracturing (HF) operations in the region. Scattered seismic events were detected in the Horn River Basin throughout the study periods. The located seismicity within 100 km of the Fort Nelson seismic station had a clearly increasing trend, specifically in the Etsho area where most local HF operations were performed. The number of events was increased from 24 in 2002–2003 (prior to HF operations) to 131 in 2011 (peak period of HF operations). In addition, maximum magnitude of the events was shifted from ML 2.9 to ML 3.6 as the scale of HF operation expanded from 2006–2007 to 2011. Based on our relocated earthquake catalog, the overall b value i...