Study of the AVO Effect from a Fractured Carbonate - A Physical Model Study

The increasing demand for hydrocarbons requires improved techniques for locating traps and reservoirs. With many of the oil and gas reservoirs being in fractures, it is of interest to develop new methods for locating these fractures and for determining their orientation and crack density. Recently several theories have been put forth on the variations of P wave reflections with offset across a set of fractures. To test these concepts, the Allied Geophysical Laboratory (AGL) at the University of Houston (UH) constructed a physical model of a fractured carbonate reservoir and acquired seismic data over this model. These data were then processed and analyzed to determine what amplitude variations occurred with the varying offset.