Fracture characterization using pre-stack seismic anisotropy approaches

Natural fractures largely control the fluid flow and the stability of geological subsurface, making characterization of natural fractures essential for near surface studies. Properties of natural fractures are typically determined through well data. Well data are known by their accuracy, but they provide local information. Furthermore, interpreting such data is subjective as it relies on human evaluation. Seismic remain one of the most efficient methods for detecting and characterizing fractures, and conventional seismic methods based on post-stack seismic data and stochastic concepts. These methods are mainly coherency, curvature, and ant tracking method. Nonetheless, these attributes may introduce artifacts due to discontinuities caused by anomalies other than fractures, such as lithological. We believe that pre-stack data provide more information on fractures than post-stack data, especially about fluid content, because of amplitude preservation. However, the use of pre-stack data requires more efforts, especially in complicated media such as carbonate rocks, due to limitation in increasing signal to noise ratio (SNR) caused by skipping stack step. This study focuses on leveraging seismic anisotropy to investigate fractures from pre-stack data. The study used the anisotropy of seismic amplitude, seismic attenuation and shear wave splitting to fracture properties.