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Seismic AVOaz inversion in low-loss viscoelastic orthorhombic medium

ZIJIAN GE1 ,  SHULIN PAN1 ,  JINGYE LI2 ,  JIANBO HUANG3 ,  HAORAN LUO4 ,  JIANG HE1
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1 School of Geosciences and Technology, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, P.R. China.,
2 State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, P.R. China.,
3 Engineering Technology Research Institute, Xinjiang Oilfield Company, Karamay 830011, P.R. China.,
4 Shale Gas Research Institute, Petro China Southwest Oil & Gasfield Company, Chengdu 610051, P.R. China.,
JSE 2021, 30(6), 545–560;
Submitted: 9 June 2025 | Revised: 9 June 2025 | Accepted: 9 June 2025 | Published: 9 June 2025
© 2025 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Ge, Z.J., Pan, S.L., Li, J.Y., Huang, J.B., Luo, H.R. and He, J., 2001. Seismic AVOaz inversion in low-loss viscoelastic orthorhombic medium. Journal of Seismic Exploration, 30: 545-560. The real shale reservoirs are conventionally equivalent to the orthorhombic medium, which contains a large number of high angle fractures and strong horizontal bedding properties. The attenuation effect due to frequency-dependent absorption and wave-front divergence can reveal the location of oil and gas reservoirs. Weak anisotropy parameters (WA) and fracture compliances provide additional brittleness and fluid type information in the description of orthorhombic anisotropy (OA). In this paper, the complex WA parameters and fracture compliances associated with inverse quality factors are introduced into the reflection coefficient of OA medium. After a series of simplifications and derivations, a linear reflection coefficient formula with attenuation term expressed by integrated attenuation factor is available. Integrated attenuation factor refers to the product of inverse quality factors of dissipative background and fracture. Finally, WA parameters, fracture compliances and integrated inverse quality factors can be estimated by amplitude versus offset and azimuth (AVOA) inversion based on Bayesian frame. When applied to synthetic multi-azimuth angle gathers with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 2, the proposed method shows reliable stability and accuracy.

Keywords
seismic anisotropy
attenuation
inversion theory
orthorhombic medium
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Electronic ISSN: 0963-0651 Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing
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