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P-wave attenuation anisotropy in TI media and its application in fracture parameters inversion

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Abstract

The existence of aligned fractures in fluid-saturated rocks leads to obvious attenuation anisotropy and velocity anisotropy. Attenuation anisotropy analysis can be applied to estimate fracture density and scale, which provide important information for reservoir identification. This paper derives P-wave attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media where the symmetry axis is in the arbitrary direction theoretically and modifies the spectral ratio method to measure attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media, thus avoiding a large measurement error when applied to wide azimuth or full azimuth data. Fracture dip and azimuth can be estimated through attenuation anisotropy analysis. For small-scale fractures, fracture scale and fracture density can be determined with enhanced convergence if velocity and attenuation information are both used. We also apply the modified spectralratio method to microseismic field data from an oilfield in East China and extract the fracture dip through attenuation anisotropy analysis. The result agrees with the microseismic monitoring.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof. Jerry M. Harris of the Stanford Wave Physics Lab for his suggestions on the characteristics of attenuation anisotropy in a fractured media. We are also grateful to the reviewers Wang Runqiu and Yang Kai for their helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Yi-Yuan He, Tian-Yue Hu, Chuan He & Yu-Yang Tan

  2. China Aero Geophysical Survey and Remote Sensing Center for Land and Resources, Beijing, 100083, China

    Yi-Yuan He

Authors
  1. Yi-Yuan He
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  2. Tian-Yue Hu
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  3. Chuan He
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  4. Yu-Yang Tan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tian-Yue Hu.

Additional information

This research is supported by 973 Program of China (No. 2013CB228602), National Science and Technology Major Project of China (No. 2016ZX05004003-002) and 863 Program of China (No. 2013AA064202).

He Yi-Yuan received her B.Sc. from Peking University in 2007 and obtained her Ph.D.in Geophysics in Peking University in 2016. Her research work focuses on seismic attenuation anisotropy and fracture prediction. Currently, she works at the China Aero Geophysical Survey and Remote Sensing Center for Land and Resources. Email: heyiyuan_0321@126.com

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He, YY., Hu, TY., He, C. et al. P-wave attenuation anisotropy in TI media and its application in fracture parameters inversion. Appl. Geophys. 13, 649–657 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-016-0592-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-016-0592-7

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