P-wave attenuation anisotropy in TI media and its application in fracture parameters inversion

The existence of aligned fractures in fluid-saturated rocks leads to obvious attenuation anisotropy and velocity anisotropy. Attenuation anisotropy analysis can be applied to estimate fracture density and scale, which provide important information for reservoir identification. This paper derives P-wave attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media where the symmetry axis is in the arbitrary direction theoretically and modifies the spectral ratio method to measure attenuation anisotropy in the ATI media, thus avoiding a large measurement error when applied to wide azimuth or full azimuth data. Fracture dip and azimuth can be estimated through attenuation anisotropy analysis. For small-scale fractures, fracture scale and fracture density can be determined with enhanced convergence if velocity and attenuation information are both used. We also apply the modified spectralratio method to microseismic field data from an oilfield in East China and extract the fracture dip through attenuation anisotropy analysis. The result agrees with the microseismic monitoring.