Fracture Orientation from P Wave Seismic Data Using Volumetric Curvature, Silo Field, Wyoming

Blumentritt, Charles H.¹, Kurtt J. Marfurt², Michael Murphy³ (1) Geo-Texture Technologies, Houtson, TX (2) University of Houston, Houston, (3) University of Houston, Houston, TX

Silo Field is a fractured reservoir over which 3-D P wave and S wave data have been acquired for the purpose of determining fracture orientation. The S wave data have been analyzed for the usual slow wave and fast wave orientations to yield a fracture orientation of 258 degrees. We apply volumetric curvature to the P wave data and observed a similar result. Our technique is a simple, cost effective method of using the lower cost P wave data to answer a question usually reserved for the more expensive S wave data.

We determine curvature values for every point in a conventional stacked and migrated 3-D seismic data volume using a small (3 traces by 3 traces by 9 samples) subvolume. We then observe the lineaments appearing in the curvature data at the target level and analyze their orientations with rose diagrams. We propose that those lineaments represent subtle anticlines, synclines, and flexures caused by the stresses controlling and resulting from the anisotropy determined from the S wave data.