A new technique for mapping fractures using 3-D seismic data

Abstract

We developed and tested an attribute mapping technique which was found very useful in aiding fracture detection. It requires a transform of binned CMP trace data from the original Cartesian spatial coordinates to a Polar system and displays the important seismic attributes in a polar-plot form. Data lineations within the map is a direct indicator of the orientation of fracturing. The technique utilises all available azimuths and offsets in a super bin and can operate on any 3-D seismic data with wide azimuthal and offset distributions.We demonstrate the application using real field data andphysical modelling data.