Anisotropic attenuation analysis of crosshole data generated during hydraulic fracturing

Abstract

Attenuation of seismic waves is sensitive to the physical properties of the subsurface and has been observed in vertical seismic profiling (VSP) and reflection data. De et al. (1994) report measurements of the P- and S-wave quality factors from VSP surveys and sonic logs. Klimentos (1995) measures compressional and shear attenuation from sonic logs in sandstone formations with variable oil, water, and gas saturation and observes that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] can be used for pore-fluid discrimination. Maultzsch et al. (2007) evaluate P-wave azimuthal attenuation anisotropy from 3D VSP data acquired over a fractured hydrocarbon reservoir and infer fracture directions from attenuation analysis. Attenuation anisotropy has also been observed in P-wave reflection data (Clark et al., 2009; Vasconcelos and Jenner, 2005). Seismic attenuation is most commonly measured using the spectral-ratio method. Zhu et al. (2007) extend the spectral-ratio method to anisotropic media and apply it to physical modeling data acquired for a transversely isotropic (TI) sample. Computing spectral ratios helps eliminate the source spectrum and can be used to obtain accurate effective and interval attenuation coefficients of P- and S-waves in layered anisotropic media (Behura and Tsvankin, 2009a; Shekar and Tsvankin, 2011).