Harness Oil and Gas Big Data with Analytics: Optimize Exploration and Production with Data Driven Models

Chapter 3Seismic Attribute Analysis

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Traditionally, seismic data have been acquired, processed, and interpreted to identify stratigraphic and structural traps and to act as adjuvant support in reservoir characterization. However, seismic attributes have gained increasing importance as the seismic acquisition and processing techniques have improved over the past decade. The multitude of seismic attributes and the understanding of their relevance have spawned a great deal of interest to explore the correlations between acoustic properties and rock petrophysics.

EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION VALUE PROPOSITIONS

Seismic data play an increasingly important role in reservoir surveillance, characterization, and integrated history matching. Quantitative use of time-lapse seismic data (4D seismic) requires modeling relationships and correlations between the changes in reservoir saturation, pressures, elastic properties, and seismic attributes.

Seismic data are now becoming pivotal as 3D and 4D surveys are accelerated across green- and brownfields. In addition to the customary seismic wavelet data processing out of scope for this book, it is becoming more important to fully appreciate the extensive array of seismic attributes that can be generated from both pre- and post-stack traces. We shall discuss the value of building a ...