Effects of pressure and saturation on seismic velocities and impedance measurements

Abstract

Two synthetic data sets were examined to study the possible methods for distinguishing the effects of changes in saturation, and changes in pore pressure, on seismic velocity and impedance measurements. The results show that the results obtained previously on the dependence of laboratory velocity data on changes in saturation carry over without change to the data in these data sets. The assumption in this case is that the only data available are the seismic velocities. This situation can arise in cross-well seismic tomography. Of more direct interest to this project is how these methods and results should change when the data are instead seismic impedance measurements. The main conclusions are that the most appropriate plotting methods for seismic impedance data in order to distinguish changes in saturation, changes in pressure, and saturation changes from pressure changes are ({rho}{mu}, {lambda}/{mu}) and ({mu}/{lambda}, {rho}{mu}{sup 2}/{lambda}). All of these plotting coordinates can be computed easily from the impedance data {rho}{nu}{sub p} and {rho}{nu}{sub s}, since {rho}{mu} = ({rho}{nu}{sub s}){sup 2}, and {rho}{lambda} = ({rho}{nu}{sub p}){sup 2} - 2({rho}{nu}{sub s}){sup 2}, while {lambda}/{mu} = {rho}{lambda}/{rho}{mu} and {rho}{mu}{sup 2}/{lambda} = ({rho}{mu}){sup 2}/{rho}{lambda}. These choices are not the only possibilities, but they seem to give the desired results in many situations. Some issues remain concerning the details at high porosities and small pore pressures, and these will need to be addressed in future work.