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Permeability dependence of seismic amplitudes

Université de Rennes, France

Jerry M. Harris

Stanford University, California, U.S.

David L. Johnson

Schlumberger-Doll Research, Ridgefield, Connecticut, U.S.

Albena Mateeva

Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, U.S.

Kurt T. Nihel

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, U.S.

Robert L. Nowack

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.

James W. Rector

University of California at Berkeley, California, U.S.

Hartmut Spetzler

University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado U.S.

Rushan Wu

University of California at Santa Cruz, California, U.S.

Tokuo Yamomoto

University of Miami. Florida, U.S.

James G. Berryman

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, U.S.

Michael Fehler

Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, U.S.

Corresponding author: spride@univ-rennes1.fr

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Can permeability be determined from seismic data? This question has been around since Maurice Biot, working for Shell in the 1950s, introduced the idea that seismic waves induce fluid flow in saturated rocks due to fluid-pressure equilibration between the peaks and troughs of a compressional wave (or due to grain accelerations in the case of a shear wave). Biot (1956) established a frequency-dependent analytical relation between permeability and seismic attenuation. However, laboratory, sonic log, crosswell, VSP, and surface seismic have all demonstrated that Biot's predictions often greatly underestimate the measured levels of attenuation—dramatically so for the lower-frequency measurements.

Yet, if an unresolved link truly exists between seismic amplitudes and permeability, the potential benefit to the oil industry is enormous. For this reason, the Department of Energy (DOE) brought together 15 participants from industry, national laboratories, and universities to concentrate for two days on whether permeability information is conceivably contained in and retrievable from seismic data. The present article represents much of the workshop discussion (which took place 5–6 December 2001 in Berkeley, California), but is not strictly limited to it.

Not all connections between hydrological and seismic properties are considered. Three-dimensional seismic images and time-lapse seismic monitoring are routinely used by reservoir engineers in constructing and constraining their reservoir model. Such imaging applications of seismic surveys to hydrological modeling are not discussed. Furthermore, in fractured reservoirs it is reasonable to postulate that any locally determined seismic anisotropy defines a symmetry class for the geologic material that must also be satisfied by the permeability tensor. Neither are such material-symmetry constraints discussed.

The focus here is only on whether the permeability of the rocks through which seismic waves propagate directly influences the decay of the wave amplitudes with distance. Key to addressing this question is an up-to-date discussion of the likely attenuation . . . [Full Text of this Article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				E. Liu, M. Chapman, J. A. Hudson, S. R. Tod, S. Maultzsch, and X.-Y. Li Quantitative determination of hydraulic properties of fractured rock using seismic techniques Geological Society, London, Special Publications, January 1, 2005; 249(1): 29 - 42. [Abstract] [PDF]