In Situ Stress Path of a North-Sea Shale

The main application of seismics was for many years tied to exploration. Currently however, seismics is more and more used for reservoir characterization. This has been made possible through development of AVO techniques, through the use of time lapse seismics to monitor e.g. injection fronts, and through the development of new detection techniques (such as seabed geophysics) permitting extensive use of S-wave data. These developments and the new applications have called for research on the link between observed wave signatures and rock characteristics; i.e. on rock physics. Rock physics may also point to new seismic attributes that may improve our ability to extract information from seismic data. Most likely, the development of improved rock physics methods to quantify effects of fluid substitution and pore pressure changes in 4D seismics may also prove fruitful for exploration applications of seismics.