Attenuation Tomography Analysis in the Val d’Agri Oilfield

The Val d’Agri basin in southern Italy is largest onshore hydrocarbon systems in Europe and, at the same time, one of the most seismically active sedimentary basins in the Apennines. This area appears as an ideal natural laboratory for investigating how fluids, rock damage and stress interact in the shallow crust thanks to the production and fluid injection that take place in this oilfield.
We analyze a dense local earthquake dataset recorded in the Val d’Agri area using seismic attenuation tomography. Attenuation is imaged with the MuRAT workflow, a Matlab algorithm that exploits multi-frequency measurements of direct and coda-wave amplitudes to recover three-dimensional distributions of scattering and absorption. These parameters are highly sensitive to fracture density, lithology, and fluid saturation, and therefore provide a physically meaningful view of the reservoir and fault system.
The resulting attenuation volumes allow us to identify zones of strong energy loss and high heterogeneity that may correspond to highly fractured, fluid-rich areas within the sedimentary cover and along major fault systems. Such features are particularly relevant in a georesource context, as they can act both as preferential fluid pathways and as mechanically weak volumes prone to seismic activation. Results of these analyses provide new light on the internal structure of the reservoir and its surrounding fault network, while also highlighting their interaction with industrial operations.
Overall, this work demonstrates how seismic energy attenuation tomography can provide a powerful framework for imaging fluid–fault interactions in active hydrocarbon systems. The results offer new insights into the processes controlling induced and triggered seismicity in the Val d’Agri basin and contribute to the development of geophysically informed strategies for sustainable resource exploitation and seismic risk management.