Seismic characterization of fractured reservoirs by focusing Gaussian beams

ABSTRACTNaturally fractured reservoirs occur worldwide, and they account for the bulk of global oil production. The most important impact of fractures is their influence on fluid flow. To maximize oil production, the characterization of a fractured reservoir at the scale of an oil field is very important. For fluid transport, the critical parameters are connectivity and transmittivity plus orientation. These can be related to fracture spacing, compliance, and orientation, which are the critical seismic parameters of rock physics models. We discovered a new seismic technique that can invert for the spatially dependent fracture orientation, spacing, and compliance, using surface seismic data. Unlike most seismic methods that rely on using singly scattered/diffracted waves whose signal-to-noise ratios are usually very low, we found that waves multiply scattered by fractures can be energetic. The direction information of the fracture multiply scattered waves contains fracture orientation and spacing informati...