A review on multicomponent seismology: A potential seismic application for reservoir characterization

Abstract

Searching for hydrocarbon reserves in deep subsurface is the main concern of wide community of geophysicists and geoscientists in petroleum industry. Exploration seismology has substantially contributed to finding and developing giant fields worldwide. The technology has evolved from two to three-dimensional method, and later added a fourth dimension for reservoir monitoring. Continuous depletion of many old fields and the increasing world consumption of crude oil pushed to consistently search for techniques that help recover more reserves from old fields and find alternative fields in more complex and deeper formations either on land and in offshore. In such environments, conventional seismic with the compressional (P) wave alone proved to be insufficient. Multicomponent seismology came as a solution to most limitations encountered in P-wave imaging. That is, recording different components of the seismic wave field allowed geophysicists to map complex reservoirs and extract information that could not be extracted previously. The technology demonstrated its value in many fields and gained popularity in basins worldwide. In this review study, we give an overview about multicomponent seismology, its history, data acquisition, processing and interpretation as well as the state-of the-art of its applications. Recent examples from world basins are highlighted. The study concludes that despite the success achieved in many geographical areas such as deep offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), North Sea, Offshore Brazil, China and Australia, much work remains for the technology to gain similar acceptance in other areas such as Middle East, East Asia, West Africa and North Africa. However, with the tremendous advances reported in data recording, processing and interpretation, the situation may change.

Shallow Gas Discrimination of Multicomponent Seismic Data Using Seismic Physical Modeling

“…국내에서 Jang et al (Hardage et al, 2011). 다성분 탄성파 탐사는 석유 ․ 가스 개발을 위한 목적으로 주로 활용하고 있으며, 지층 내 석유 ․ 가스 판별, 균열 분포 분석 및 규명, 암상 구분, 저류층 모니터링 등에 활용하고 있다 (Farfour and Yoon, 2016). 외국에서는 지층 내 탄화수 소 판별 및 분석 (Hanitzsch et al, 2007;Reilly et al, 2010), 균열대 분포 및 규명 (AI-Hawas et al, 2003;Jianming et al, 2009), 암상 구분 (Dumitrescu et al, 2014), 저류층 모 니터링 (Van Gestel et al, 2008;Davis, 2015) 등 다양한 분 야에서 연구를 수행하고 있다.…”

Methodology of elastic full‐waveform inversion of multicomponent ocean‐bottom data for anisotropic media

“…In marine seismic environments, the application of ocean‐bottom acquisition systems (nodes or cables) is becoming increasingly popular because of their ability to record four‐component (4‐C) data (i.e., 3‐C sensors recording particle velocity and a single hydrophone recording pressure). Multicomponent data provide information about the S‐wave velocity model and anisotropy parameters (Farfour and Yoon, 2016). Ocean‐bottom acquisition systems (OBS) usually provide a wider azimuthal coverage and higher signal‐to‐noise ratio than streamer acquisition and acquire data that are less likely than streamer data to be contaminated by water waves and boat noise.…”

Lithospheric Structure of the Hikurangi Subduction Margin

“…Multicomponent OBS experiments have been successful in deriving the S-wave velocity structure beneath oceans using airgun sources in different tectonic settings [e.g. Digranes et al, 2003;Eccles et al, 2009;Farfour and Yoon, 2016;Kodaira et al, 1996;Tsuji et al, 2011].…”