Differential Attenuation of ‘Split' Shear Waves – A Future Tool for Reservoir Characterisation?

Seismic attenuation anisotropy provides an additional set of observations with which to constrain inversions for rock properties. In this paper we present a simple methodology for analysis of attenuation anisotropy, and apply it to observations made from microseismic data from the Valhall field. These data have been previously analysed for shear-wave splitting (Teanby et al., 2004). The attenuation anisotropy observations were made with no extra acquisition costs beyond those incurred for the shear-wave splitting analysis.