Anisotropy

Seismic anisotropy, or the directional variation of seismic properties, is now an important theme in exploration seismology. Failure to take anisotropy into account can lead to distorted subsurface images, while proper consideration of the effects gives access to important information about the fracture network and fluid saturation. In particular, anisotropy is known to be a key issue for the processing and interpretation of multicomponent data.

The Edinburgh Anisotropy Project -EAP- has been working on all aspects of applied seismic anisotropy for the last 20 years, and is currently supported by a consortium of 18 leading oil and service companies. Emphasis in the current phase is on converted-wave processing and the analysis of frequency-dependent anisotropic properties. The use of the frequency-dependent attributes allows us to derive fracture scale, connectivity and saturation information which is unavailable through traditional analysis.

For further information about this research, contact Prof. Xiang-Yang Li.