Straightening out lateral shifts in time-lapse seismic

Abstract

In time-lapse seismic studies involving compacting reservoirs, vertical time-lapse time-shifts are frequently observed and prove useful for mapping out the areal distribution of reservoir compaction (Hatchell and Bourne, 2005). In addition to the vertical shifts, some work has shown that horizontal or lateral shifts are also present in time-lapse data (e.g., Hall et al., 2002; Hall, 2006; and Hale, 2007) and that these shifts are large, directed outward from the reservoir, and carry information different from the vertical shifts. Although methods for extracting vertical and lateral shifts from time-lapse data have been described, the origin of these shifts and their dependence on the underlying geomechanical model has not been thoroughly addressed.