How well can seismic anisotropy resolve natural fractures in hydrocarbon reservoirs, and is there room for improvement?

The influence that fractures have on seismic waves is controlled by the nature of the network formed by the fracture system. However. the relationship between natural fracture networks and the wavefield needs careful consideration to understand which factors consort to form . the overall seismic response. Dilute concentrations of smooth euclidian shapes fail to adequately represent nature's complexity when investigating seismic scattering from natural fracture networks. In spite of this drawback, theories based on such work have been successful at helping to resolve details of simple fractured targets in a wide variety of geological scenarios. For more complex reservoir settings and more widespread use of this technique. future work must address possible departures from such traditional approaches. to consider actual mapped measurements. Work is currently in progress to ·achieve this goal using a technique which permits the: definition of a numerical equivalent medium for an ·arbitrary input. This helps to investigate whether the directional behaviour of the transmitted wavefield has potential in defining these different network realization; and to isolate the most critical features of this response.