Seismic studies of coal bed methane content in the west coal mining area of Qinshui Basin

The coal bed methane content (CBMC) in the west mining area of Jincheng coalfield, southeastern Qinshui Basin, is studied based on seismic data and well-logs together with laboratory measurements. The results show that the Shuey approximation has better adaptability according to the Zoeppritz equation result; the designed fold number for an ordinary seismic data is sufficient for post-stack data but insufficient for pre-stack data regarding the signal to noise ratio (SNR). Therefore a larger grid analysis was created in order to improve the SNR. The velocity field created by logging is better than that created by stack velocity in both accuracy and effectiveness. A reasonable distribution of the amplitude versus offset (AVO) attributes can be facilitated by taking the AVO response from logging as a standard for calibrating the amplitude distribution. Some AVO attributes have a close relationship with CBMC. The worst attribute is polarization magnitude, for which the correlation coefficient is 0.308; and the best attribute is the polarization product from intercept, of which the correlation coefficient is −0.8136. CBMC predicted by AVO attributes is better overall than that predicted by direct interpolation of CBMC; the validation error of the former is 14.47%, which is lower than that of the latter 23.30%. CBMC of this area ranges from 2.5 m3/t to 22 m3/t. Most CBMC in the syncline is over 10 m3/t, but it is below 10 m3/t in the anticline; on the whole, CBMC in the syncline is higher than that in anticline.