Patent ID: 7627429

Claim:
A method of producing underground deposits of hydrocarbon from a formation, comprising: determining a fault surface in said formation, the step of determining said fault surface in said formation including: determining a first plurality of crosscorrelation values for a 3D Volume, wherein the first plurality of crosscorrelation values are associated, respectively, with a corresponding first plurality of 3D Volumes, wherein the first plurality of 3D Volumes are defined by a seed segment and respective target segments, wherein said first plurality of crosscorrelation values are computed by cross-correlating values of voxels in a first layer and values of voxels in a second layer, wherein the first and second layers are separated by said fault surface; and selecting a first minimum one of the first plurality of crosscorrelation values, a first derived fault segment corresponding to said first minimum one of the first plurality of crosscorrelation values, said first derived fault segment approximately lying on said fault surface, wherein said first derived fault segment is one of the target segments that corresponds to said first minimum one of the first plurality of crosscorrelation values; and after the fault surface is determined, drilling said formation in order to produce said underground deposits of hydrocarbon from said formation.