HGS April General Dinner

HGS April General Dinner

Reservoir Dynamics of Large-Scale Injection: Lessons from the Permian Basin

Speaker: Dr. Katie Smye

Date: Monday, 13 April 2026

Time: 5:30 – 8:30

Location: Guadalajara Hacienda, 9799 Katy Fwy, Houston, TX 77024

Cost: $65 Members, $75 Non-members, $40 Students

Details: Dinner and two drink tickets included

UT Alumni night—come network with fellow UT geos!

Abstract:

Reservoir Dynamics of Large-Scale Injection: Lessons from the Permian Basin
Katie Smye
Center for Injection and Seismicity Research, The University of Texas at Austin

Over the past decade, the Permian Basin region has served as a natural laboratory for understanding the reservoir dynamics and impacts of fluid injection at the basin scale. The ongoing need to dispose of tens of millions of barrels of produced water daily in the region has driven the evolution of injection practices across a range of geologic and operational settings. Injection in the Permian Basin occurs across distinct geologic systems: in shallow and deep reservoirs in the Midland and Delaware Basins, and in the Central Basin Platform. Deep injection targeting carbonate units overlying crystalline basement is comparable to injection settings in the Fort Worth Basin and midcontinent regions such as Oklahoma and Kansas, and is associated with historically high rates of seismicity on faults extending from basement into the injection strata. Operational changes including reductions in deep injection volumes have coincided with a ~50% decrease in M ≥ 3.0 earthquakes over the past year. Shallow injection is associated with seismicity to a lesser degree, but increasing reliance on these strata is causing surface uplift, up to tens of centimeters in places, well control issues in overpressured intervals, and localized surface flows from legacy vertical wellbores.

This lecture draws on integrated data and models spanning surface to basement, to examine how large-scale injection drives changes in pressure and stress, resulting in geomechanical challenges. We will explore the geologic controls on injection-induced hazards, highlight the importance of monitoring and data integration, and offer lessons for safely managing large-scale injections in other basins globally.

Bio

Katie Smye is a Research Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin and Principal Investigator of the Center for Injection and Seismicity Research (CISR), an industry-funded research consortium focused on water injection capacity and seismic hazard mitigation, particularly in the Permian Basin. Dr. Smye is known for leading multidisciplinary efforts integrating geologic, geophysical, and reservoir engineering data and models to assess the response of subsurface systems to large-scale fluid injection.

She holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Geology and Chemistry from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Smye has authored or co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and serves as an Associate Editor for the AAPG Bulletin. She is an active contributor to technical conferences as a session convener and speaker, and frequently communicates scientific findings to public and media audiences on topics related to induced seismicity and sustainable reservoir management.

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