Al-Shuhail Abdullatif A. - Seismic Data Interpretation Using Digital Image Processing

This edition first published 2017

2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

The right of Abdullatif A. Al-Shuhail, Saleh A. Al-Dossary and Wail A. Mousa to be identified as the author(s) of this work have been asserted in accordance with law.

Registered Offices

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Office

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Al-Shuhail, Abdullatif Abdulrahman, 1962- author. | Al-Dossary, Saleh A., 1965- author. | Mousa, Wail Abdul-Hakim, author.

Title: Seismic data interpretation using digital image processing / Abdullatif A. Al-Shuhail, Saleh A. Al-Dossary, Wail A. Mousa.

Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA : John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017005390 (print) | LCCN 2017008974 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118881781 (hardback) | ISBN 9781118881804 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118881798 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Seismic reflection method. | Image processing-Digital techniques. | Petroleum-Prospecting-Data processing.

Classification: LCC TN269.84 .A425 2017 (print) | LCC TN269.84 (ebook) | DDC 551.22028/7-dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005390

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: (Background) Artpilot/Gettyimages; (Inset Images) Courtesy of authors

To my dear parents and family. AAS

To anyone who has ever taught me something. SAD

To my beloved father, mother, wife, and children. To KFUPM and my country. WAM

Human beings are experts at pattern recognition. We are well equipped to find a missing set of keys in a cluttered drawer, to find a family member in a crowd, to find the image of a cow in the clouds, or to find a mythological character in a constellation of stars. Such pattern recognition is key to seismic data analysis, where a human interpreter identifies and integrates the amplitude, spectral content, waveform, and geometric configuration of the seismic response to the underlying geology with an appropriate tectonic, depositional, or diagenetic model. For a seasoned interpreter, much of this pattern recognition is done subconsciously, requiring little conscious thought, much like pedaling and maintaining your balance on a bicycle. However, advances in seismic acquisition and processing technology are increasing more rapidly than the number of seismic interpreters. Some modern seismic surveys may be 100 Gbytes in size, while merged surveys may be larger still. It has become increasingly intractable for an interpreter to examine each and every seismic voxel.

Seismic attributes attempt to reduce the amount of data the interpreter needs to examine by capturing the same key components used in the conventional interpretation of vertical seismic amplitude sections. All attributes except the input seismic amplitude data itself implicitly or explicitly define an analysis window. Instantaneous attributes are, in reality, not instantaneous, but rather integrate the information of neighboring samples through the use of a Hilbert transform. Spectral magnitude and phase components use the information of neighboring samples on a seismic trace, while post-stack impedance inversion uses the information content of all the overlying samples as well. Geometric attributes such as coherence, curvature, and texture analysis operate in a three-dimensional (3D) window, including neighboring seismic samples and traces, often oriented along structural dip. Amplitude versus offset, inversion for P- and S-impedances, and estimates of amplitude versus azimuth increase the size of the data to be analyzed further. By extracting such key components as an auxiliary attribute volume, an experienced interpreter can now rapidly animate through time or depth slices to identify subtle, and otherwise easily overlooked, channels, mounds, collapse, slumps, faults, and folds, as well as zones of anomalous porosity or anisotropy. Equally important, other professionals, including stratigraphers, structural geologists, drilling engineers, and completion engineers, now have access to images that have removed much of the overprint of the seismic wavelet and begin to mimic interpreted geologic cross-sections and maps.

While geoscientists call such resulting images seismic attribute volumes, most of the scientific world refers to them as the results of image processing. Recent advances in medical X-ray analysis, positron emission tomographycomputed tomography scans, video images, and meteorological data have not yet been applied to 3D seismic data volumes. For example, can one apply techniques to map the corkscrew veins seen in 3D images of a human kidney to mapping crosscutting channels in a fluvial deltaic complex? Can one apply techniques used to monitor changes in land use of a suspected terrorist or narcotics site to monitor changes due to reservoir completion? Can one use techniques in Doppler radar to map tornadoes to identify potential drilling hazards seen in seismic anisotropy? While most seismic interpreters have a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy, land use, and weather, few radiologists, security analysts, and meteorologists, let alone algorithm developers with a traditional electric engineering background, have a good understanding of geology and geologic processes, let alone geology convolved with a seismic wavelet.

The authors of