Predicting the azimuth of in-situ horizontal stress by integrating multiple discipline data

The azimuth of in-situ horizontal stress is one of the most important factors in planning horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing for unconventional resources plays. The azimuth of maximum horizontal stress can be predicted by analyzing the induced fracture in image logs. The clustering of micro-seismic events can also be used to predict the azimuth of in-situ maximum horizontal stress. However, the azimuth of in-situ maximum horizontal stress obtained from both image logs and micro-seismic events are limited to the near wellbore location. To predict the azimuth of three-dimension in-situ maximum horizontal stress, we focus our analysis on correlating the seismic attributes computed from pre-stack and post-stack seismic data with the interpreted azimuth obtained from microseismic data. The application indicates that the azimuthal anisotropy of instantaneous frequency computed from offset vector title (OVT) seismic data can be used to predict the azimuth of maximum in-situ horizontal stress.