Seismic data are used in petroleum exploration to define geologic features in the subsurface. Recent advancements in seismic exploration have examined the effect of fluid and rock properties on seismic attributes. These advancements may provide improved reservoir characterization using techniques examined here. This is accomplished two parts; first, a study of fluid properties and their effect ...

As oil and gas exploration moves into deeper offshore areas, Shallow Water Flow (SWF) from overpressured, unconsolidated/uncemented sands becomes a high profile drilling hazard. Laboratory measurements show that SWF sands have high seismic compressional to shear velocity (Vp/Vs) ratios. Thus, elastic seismic inversion for Vp/Vs provides a quantitative identification of SWF sands, and predrill p...

This paper proposes a simplified analytical model for seismic response prediction of concentrically braced frames. In the proposed approach, a multistory frame model is reduced to an equivalent shear-building one by performing a static pushover analysis. The conventional shear-building model has been improved by introducing supplementary springs to account for flexural displacements in addition...

Manual stratigraphic interpretation of modern 3-D seismic images is extremely timeconsuming. We present a method based on nonstationary predictive signal/noise separation for automatically recognizing the occurence of a predefined pattern in seismic images. The method is tested on 2-D synthetic and real seismic images, and is shown to reliably detect the presence of unconformities in both.

Modern seismic surveys with higher-precision numerization (24-bits A/D converters) have led to ever increasing amounts of seismic data. Management of these large datasets becomes critical, not only for transmission, but also for storage, processing and interpretation. Compression algorithms have been proposed in the geophysicists' community over the past few years as a way to e ectively manage ...

Time-lapse 3-D seismic monitoring of subsurface rock property changes incurred during reservoir fluid-flow processes is an emerging new diagnostic technology for optimizing hydrocarbon production. I discuss the physical theory relevant for three-phase fluid flow in a producing oil reservoir, and rock physics transformations of fluid-flow pressure, temperature and pore-fluid saturation values to...

The method of simultaneous PP-PS inversion has recently been developed and tested on the 3-D Blackfoot seismic data set. This paper shows the application of this method on 3C-2D seismic data from Pikes Peak oilfield. The inversion was accomplished with a newly installed inversion module in ProMAX. After careful prestack processing, five limitedoffset stacked sections for each of the vertical an...

I present an idealized physical model of steamflood fluid-flow and make rock physics predictions of seismic impedance changes that might be observable in 3-D surface seismic monitoring data. Four distinct fluid-flow phases are considered. Closest to the steam injection well, a small hot steam zone should be very visible in seismic data due to a predicted 30% decrease in P-wave velocity (Vp) com...