Technology Focus: Seismic (February 2025)
Authors: Ochai-Audu Eudorah 
Published: February 2025

As with previous years, technical papers reviewed for this feature are laden with novel technology borne of the quest to understand and solve complex geological structures and features that ultimately will improve our collective effort toward fostering efficient energy production. The three papers presented here are focused on innovative approaches to handling such complexities.

Fracture network reconstruction is still a challenging topic for hydrocarbon production because of the heterogeneity and complexity of the stress fields, which lead to limited accuracy of fracture orientation. As such, novel techniques that present more-reliable and improved characterization of hydraulic fractures, such as the energy-based 3D fracture reconstruction method, are worth reading about.

Related to the fracture network reconstruction challenge is the occurrence of subseismic faults and fracture corridors, including their characteristic density and orientation in a complex compressional tectonic zone that led to well failure in a fracture-dependent reservoir, impeding flow potential and affecting wellbore stability.

A proposed innovation, the elastic dislocation model, proves to be useful for finding sweet spots in fractured carbonates with exploratory wells to enhance the prediction of naturally occurring fracture corridors for better well placement and optimized production.

Furthermore, the challenge of cycle-skipping associated with the full waveform inversion (FWI) seismic processing technique that is prominent in subsurface structures with high complexity and low-frequency data is addressed by a novel joint-domain FWI framework applied to an ultrashallow-water oceanbottom-node data set. This technique delivers more-accurate velocity models compared with conventional FWI.

In addition to these structural-complexity challenges and their novel processes and workflows, other remarkable applications of seismic techniques include improved understanding of regional structural configuration, kerogen thermal maturity estimation, identification of a deep Paleozoic reservoir from seismic attributes, and mitigation of induced seismicity. These are presented in papers listed for recommended additional reading.

Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

IPTC 24292 - A New World Revealed With Amazing Detail: Using the Latest WAZ Seismic To Review Key Structural Elements of the Fahud Salt Basin, Oman by M.N. Al Hooti, Sultan Qaboos University, et al.

SPE 217309 - Rock-Physics-Based Direct Probabilistic Inversion of Seismic Data for Kerogen Thermal Maturity by R. Ross, Qeye

SPE 217789 - Calibration of Continuous Wavelet Transform for Dynamic Hydraulic Fracture Propagation With Microseismic Data: Field Investigation by Mohamed Adel Gabry, University of Houston, et al.

SPE 220045 - Enhancing the Passive Monitoring of the Rock-Damage Process by G. DeLandro, University of Naples Federico II, et al.

SPE 223034 - Subtle Faults Characterization Based on Fault Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Oceanbottom-Node Seismic Attributes Optimization by Huang Kongzhi, China National Petroleum Corporation, et al.

SPE 223182 - Revealing of Deep Paleozoic Reservoir Using Seismic Attributes To Detect the Distribution Footprint Effect on Modern Broadband Seismic Data: A Case Study From the IO Gas Field, Shushan Basin, North Western Desert, Egypt by Mohamed Sobhy, Khalda Petroleum Company, et al.

URTeC 4044190 - Numerical Modeling of Shear-Deformation Measurements From Distributed Fiber-Optic Strain Sensing for Detection and Mitigation of Induced Seismicity by Aishwarya Srinivasan, Texas A&M University, et al.