Extracting Information from Seismic Amplitudes: Promise and Reality

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, the quality and usefulness of information derived from both prestack and poststack seismic amplitudes has led to increases in exploration success rates as well as to more effective use of amplitudes to predict reservoir properties away from well control. However the temporal and spatial resolution and the signal to noise ratio of various attributes even for relatively shallow target depths is often inadequate to address subsurface issues of interest. An ongoing challenge to geophysicists is that of acquiring, processing and analyzing 2D, 3D and 4D surface seismic amplitudes so as to improve resolution and further quantify geologic properties of interest including subsurface porosity, lithology and fluid types.