Rapid structural framework generation for reservoir property propagation and modeling in complex structures

Abstract

In the last few years the computer assisted tools for horizon picking have improved their<br>speed, usability and quality of picking so that interpreter's productivity for this task has been<br>increased by large amounts. Some have quoted productivity gains of three months to one<br>week. In addition these tools often produce auxiliary outputs of pick quality or stratigraphic<br>attributes. More recently attention has been focused in helping improve the interpreter's<br>productivity when performing fault interpretation and framework building. For these tasks<br>software developments have focused on increased use of coherency and volume curvature.<br>These attributes are then used to inform automatic fault extraction before detailed<br>interpretation or fault tracking while interpreting so that fault surfaces are generated with<br>significantly less manual picking. The result of reducing the effort needed to produce fault<br>and horizon surfaces has been a huge increase in the number of these surfaces interpreted<br>within a seismic survey. Semi-automated Structural Framework building then enables these<br>surfaces and surfaces developed from sub-seismic well correlation to be incorporated into a<br>very detailed earth model that can be easily populated with reservoir parameters of pressure,<br>porosity, saturation and permeability. Such models are suitable for use in reservoir simulation<br>or detailed well planning. The ability to perform all these activities on a single data<br>representation with computer assistance at each step has removed many of the bottlenecks in<br>seismic data interpretation and the integration of well and seismic data interpretation.