Using AVO for fracture detection: Analytic basis and practical solutions

Tight, low-porosity reservoirs can produce significant amounts of hydrocarbons if fracture networks provide the necessary permeability. Characterization of naturally fractured reservoirs using surface seismic data is an important exploration problem that has attracted much attention in the literature. TLE, for example, had an entire issue (August 1996) on this subject. While the data and modeling in existing publications demonstrate that fracturing causes significant azimuthal variation in recorded seismic signatures, the problem is how to infer fracture parameters from these data.