Elastic and resistivity anisotropy of compacting shale: Joint effective medium modeling and field observations

Abstract

Compacting shale effective media modeling, which captures the geological process of porosity reduction and geochemical compaction, is formulated in terms of microstructural parameters associated with particle alignment and pore-shape deformation. The electrical resistivity and elastic anisotropy predicted by the model using the same microstructural parameters enable us to look at resistivity and elastic anisotropy jointly and explore the use of electrical resistivity anisotropy measurements to constrain elastic anisotropy, and vice versa.