Upper limit magnitudes for induced seismicity in energy industries

We adopt extreme value theory to estimate the upper limit of the next record-breaking magnitudes of induced seismic events. The methodology is based on order statistics and does not rely on knowledge of the state of the subsurface reservoir or injection strategy. The estimation depends on the history of record-breaking events produced by the anthropogenic activities. We apply the methodology to three different types of industrial operations: natural gas production, saltwater disposal and hydraulic fracturing. We show that the upper limit estimate provides a reliable and realistic upper bound for magnitudes of the record-breaking events in investigated datasets including 15 publicly available datasets. The predicted magnitudes do not overestimate the observed magnitudes by more than 1.0 magnitude unit and underestimation is rare, probably resulting from insufficient sampling of the statistical distribution of the induced seismicity. The richest dataset, sourced from downhole and surface monitoring of the Preston New Road hydraulic fracturing, provides reliable estimates of the magnitudes over three orders of magnitudes with only slight underprediction of the largest observed event. While the detection of weaker events improves the performance of the method, we show that it can be applied even with a few observed record-breaking events to provide reliable estimates of magnitudes. However, care must be taken to ensure that event catalogues are estimated consistently across a range of magnitudes.