Stress and Seismic Anisotropy Near Salt Bodies – Numerical Modeling and Observation from Wide-Azimuth Marine Data

C016 Stress and Seismic Anisotropy Near Salt Bodies – Numerical Modeling and Observation from Wide- Azimuth Marine Data R. Bachrach* (WesternGeco) M. Sengupta (WesternGeco) & A. Salama (WesternGeco) SUMMARY Wide-azimuth marine data enable us to observe and analyze the azimuthal response of marine sediments. Modeling the stress near salt bodies using realistic salt geometry and a finite-element solver we show that the presence of salt bodies cause changes in the orientation of the stress in the sediment near the salt. Thus horizontal stresses magnitude and direction may vary near salt bodies. We use third-order elasticity (TOE) theory to quantify the