Permeability effects on the seismic response of gas reservoirs

Abstract

In this work, we analyse the role of permeability on the seismic response of sandstone reservoirs characterized by patchy gas-water saturation. We do this in the framework of Johnson's model, which is a generalization of White's seminal model allowing for patches of arbitrary geometry. We first assess the seismic attenuation and velocity dispersion characteristics in response to wave-induced fluid flow. To this end, we perform an exhaustive analysis of the sensitivity of attenuation and velocity dispersion of compressional body waves to permeability and explore the roles played by the Johnson parameters T and S/V, which characterize the shape and size of the gas-water patches. Our results indicate that, within the typical frequency range of exploration seismic data, this sensitivity may indeed be particularly strong for a variety of realistic and relevant scenarios. Next, we extend our analysis to the corresponding effects on surface-based reflection seismic data for two pertinent models of typical sandstone reservoirs. In the case of softer and more porous formations and in the presence of relatively low levels of gas saturation we observe that the effects of permeability on seismic reflection data are indeed significant. These prominent permeability effects prevail for normal-incidence and non-normal-incidence seismic data and for a very wide range of sizes and shapes of the gas-water patches. For harder and less porous reservoirs, the normal-incidence seismic responses exhibit little or no sensitivity to permeability, but the corresponding non-normal-incidence responses show a clear dependence on this parameter, again especially so for low gas saturations. The results of this study therefore suggest that, for a range of fairly common and realistic conditions, surface-based seismic reflection data are indeed remarkably sensitive to the permeability of gas reservoirs and thus have the potential of providing corresponding first-order constraints.