Chapter6 3 6. Elastic-Based Brittleness Estimation from Seismic Inversion

Abstract Information about mechanical rock properties is essential when tight reservoir is to be stimulated using hydrofracturing technique. The brittle area has to be considered as a priority region for determining the location of hydrofracturing initiation. Seismic data are commonly used to estimate the geomechanical properties such as brittleness average from elastic properties: Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus. This paper discusses the process of brittleness estimation based on elastic properties, which can be derived by inverting the pre-stack seismic data that can produce acoustic impedance, shear impedance, and density simultaneously. Novel methods, scaled inverse quality factor of P-wave (SQp) and scaled inverse quality factor of S-wave (SQs) attributes, have been used for identification of brittleness, fracture density, and hydrocarbon bearing in the fractured basement reservoir. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been tested in the field, which is consistent with fracture density log from formation micro-imager (FMI) log and hydrocarbon column data. The result showed that there is a significant correlation between brittleness, estimated from elastic properties, and fracture density logs. New attributes, the SQp attribute is potentially to be used as a fracture density indicator, while SQs attribute indicates the existence of hydrocarbon, which is confirmed with neutron porosity-density logs.