Microstructural data used in “Drill core from seismically active sandstone gas reservoir yields clues to internal deformation mechanisms”
Europe’s largest gas field, the Groningen field (the Netherlands), is widely known for induced subsidence and seismicity caused by gas pressure depletion and associated compaction of the sandstone reservoir. Whether compaction is elastic or partly inelastic, as implied by recent experiments, is a key factor in forecasting system behavior and seismic hazard. We sought evidence for inelastic deformation through comparative microstructural analysis of unique drill core recovered from the seismogenic center of the field in 2015, 50 yr after gas production started, versus core recovered before production (1965). Microstructural data were collected from: i) a suite of 1965 and 2015 core samples, and ii) a lab-deformed sample from the 1965 core and of its virgin counterpart sample. The data include section-scale, back-scattered electron (BSE) image mosaics, phase maps prepared using electron dispersive X-ray (EDX) mapping, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) maps, and cathodoluminescence (CL) micrographs. Further, we include maps of intragranular crack distributions in the form of manually drawn overlays to BSE mosaics. Crack map data are stored either as shapefiles (.shp) (used in ESRI ArcGIS) or as zip-files (.zip) comprising crack polygon (.roi) overlays (used in ImageJ – Schindelin et al., 2012). The data is provided in 1 zip-file (Data_Verberne_et_al_2020.zip). Detailed information about the files in these zip-file and how the data are processed is described in the research paper (https://doi.org/10.1130/G48243.1), plus accompanying supplementary material, and an additional explanation file, which are also all included in this data publication. Contact person is Suzanne Hangx – s.j.t.hangx@uu.nl. The work was funded by the Dutch Oil Company (Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij BV, NAM).
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