Tech Trends 2012 FIGURE 3A Silo 3-D with Niobrara Most Positive Curvature Overlain with Azimuthal Anisotropy Vectors FIGURE 3B Silo Multiclient 3-D Showing Structural Relief at the Niobrara Formation Horizon amplitude highlighting faulting in Niobrara Curvature lineament aligned with anisotropy vectors and fault Niobrara surface fractures with natural fracture networks. Tomographic inversion of passive acoustic energy, for example, provides images that help engineers assess the performance of each frac stage and also understand the interplay of the frac process with the existing fractures (Figure 4). These images often define extensive fracture networks adjacent to the lateral being studied, which may be permeability fairways in liquids-rich shales that can be targeted with the next lateral drilled from the same pad. information because those data were not readily available and had not been converted to depth domain. A standard analysis view commonly employed has consisted of a cloud of hypocenter points surrounding a bore-hole trajectory within an otherwise empty 3-D scene. Now, modern visualization tools allow the microseismic measurements to be co-rendered with geological and 3-D seismic data, while also incorporating engineering pumping curves and proppant volumes. Data Libraries Onshore North America has been a hotbed for new seismic acquisition projects as shale development has heated over the past few years. Many of these projects are acquiring high-resolution, high-density 3D data. This has enabled a step change in the ability of shale oil operators' geoscience teams to incorporate rock properties and structural frameworks derived from 3-D seismic into geocellular models over their acreage, along with geological and petrophysical data derived from wells and cores. An emerging benefit that is helping both geoscientists and engineers establish field-development best practices is jointly analyzing calibrated seismic attributes from these geomodels with existing microseismic data. Until recently, stimulation engineers have analyzed the hypocenters computed in microseismic monitoring independently from contextual 3-D seismic FIGURE 4 138 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER This powerful integration helps enable geoscientists and engineers to work together with all available data types to understand the interaction of engineering decisions with the local geology (Figure 5A). Integrated Analysis Unconventional resource consulting teams have noted that integrated analysis of seismic and microseismic data can yield surprising conclusions about methodologies that estimate stimulated rock volumes. In Eagle Ford Tomographic Fracture Imageā¢ from Single Frac Stage, Overlain on Conventional Hypocenters