Pre-stack basis pursuit seismic inversion for brittleness of shale

• DOI: 10.1007/s12182-015-0056-3
• Publication Date: 2015-10-13T06:05:20Z
• Authors: Xing-Yao Yin; Xiao-Jing Liu; Zhao-Yun Zong
• Keywords: Fuel Technology; Geophysics; Geochemistry and Petrology; Energy Engineering and Power Technology; Economic Geology; Geology; Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Brittleness of rock plays a significant role in exploration and development of shale gas reservoirs. Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio are the key parameters for evaluating the rock brittleness in shale gas exploration because their combination relationship can quantitatively characterize the rock brittleness. The high-value anomaly of Young’s modulus and the low-value anomaly of Poisson’s ratio represent high brittleness of shale. The technique of pre-stack amplitude variation with angle inversion allows geoscientists to estimate Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio from seismic data. A model constrained basis pursuit inversion method is proposed for stably estimating Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Test results of synthetic gather data show that Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio can be estimated reasonably. With the novel method, the inverted Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of real field data focus the layer boundaries better, which is helpful for us to evaluate the brittleness of shale gas reservoirs. The results of brittleness evaluation show a good agreement with the results of well interpretation.