SHEAR-WAVE VELOCITY ESTIMATION IN POROUS ROCKS: THEORETICAL FORMULATION,PRELIMINARY VERIFICATION AND APPLICATIONS1

Shear-wave velocity logs are useful for various seismic interpretation applications, including bright spot analyses, amplitude-versus-offset analyses and multicomponent seismic interpretations. Measured shear-wave velocity logs are, however, often unavailable. We developed a general method to predict shear-wave velocity in porous rocks. If reliable compressional-wave velocity, lithology, porosity and water saturation data are available, the precision and accuracy of shear-wave velocity prediction are 9% and 3%, respectively. The success of our method depends on: (1) robust relationships between compressional- and shear-wave velocities for water-saturated, pure, porous lithologies; (2) nearly linear mixing laws for solid rock constituents; (3) first-order applicability of the Biot–Gassmann theory to real rocks. We verified these concepts with laboratory measurements and full waveform sonic logs. Shear-wave velocities estimated by our method can improve formation evaluation. Our method has been successfully tested with data from several locations.