Dissipative Seismicity for Hydrocarbon Reservoir Parameter Evaluation

Abstract

The natural seismic background of the Earth and its deep emission component are a form of dissipation of energy of geodynamic processes. The methods of studying the seismic background as a signal generated by an open complex non-linear system (the Earth’s crust) can be grouped under one branch—dissipative seismicity. In this paper, one of such methods, namely, the thermodynamic indicator of the state of rocks, is used for the remote evaluation of the local productivity of the reservoir on the hydrocarbon deposit site. The thermodynamic indicator was created using the Klimontovich entropy and yields quantitative estimates of the local disequilibrium of rocks associated with the activity of geophysical processes. We revealed monotonic, near-linear relationship between the thermodynamic indicator values calculated using the seismic background records and the cumulative thickness of productive layers in the wells in close proximity to recording points. The thermodynamic indicator is calculated assuming that there is a sliding time window threshold that must be taken empirically. The obtained results show that the thermodynamic indicator can be effectively used for outlining the deposit boundaries and choosing the potentially most productive well drilling points by extrema in the indicator value field.