Seismic Reflection Theory

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The Theory of Seismic Reflection Most seismic work results in the delineation of geological structures or features capable of trapping hydrocarbons (Telford et al, 1998). Of the two principal techniques; the seismic refraction and the seismic reflection techniques, the seismic reflection method is the most utilized technique for hydrocarbon exploration. It is able to picture the earth’s sub-surface and has the advantage of deeper depth penetration (depth) and relative higher resolution over the seismic refraction. Its’ principle of operations follows the basic principles of the seismic method.
The seismic method employs artificial energy source that sends acoustic waves into the subsurface. The time it takes for the wave to travel from the …show more content…

Seismic attributes were introduced in early 1970s (Subrahmanyam and Rao, 2008). Seismic attributes are related to the fundamental information in the seismic data and are very useful for reservoir characterization to enhance more definitive interpretation of the subsurface. It provides new seismic images that enhances the physical and geometrical description of the subsurface. Seismic attributes are computed from the seismic data and are computed usually in time rather than depth. The attributes are essentially derivatives of the basic seismic measurement viz-a-viz time, amplitude frequency and alternation (Ayolabi and Adigun, 2013).

The seismic attributes can be used qualitatively to describe the spatial heterogeneity or the geometrics of the reservoirs or quantitatively to describe the reservoir numerically. Chopra and Marfurt (2005) opined the seismic attributes reveals features, patterns and relationships in the seismic data that are other wised masked. According to Chopra and Marfurt (2005), over 50 seismic attributes have been calculated from the seismic data for the study of geologic structure, stratigraphy, rock, pore and fluid properties. Most attributes are usually post-stack.

The seismic data is treated as an analytic trace with real component (original input trace) and the complex imaginary component (generated from the Hilbert transform) from which various amplitude, phase, and frequency attributes are deduced (Nissan,

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