Supplementary Information- Geophysics lecture

This information is given in the lecture and is documented for completeness: Generally land seismic recording operations are during day light hours only (to avoid safety concerns). Land recording generally uses a vibratory energy source, and in rare cases using an impulsive explosive source. There can be as many as 300 workers on the crew moving equipment, particularly under hot desert conditions. The 2D seismic lines involve the use of a single seismic cable using geophones which are mainly left in one location while the energy source moves along the 2D line (Slide 10 Seismic field pdf). When 3D is being recorded, most of the geophone stations are placed over an area and the energy source moves around them in 3D. Consequently, the CMP gather (slide 15 seismic recording pdf) of traces is in the form of a bin (slide 22 seismic resolution pdf) rather than an in-line CMP gather. By contrast, a marine seismic recording operation is continuous 24 hours with an impulsive air-gun energy source firing about every 10 seconds. Consequently, in marine operations the vessel never stops while it is towing its cable. In this case, the receiver cable referred to as a streamer, is towed behind the vessel while the guns are fired, and as many as 20 cables can be towed behind a single vessel at about 5 knots. There are about 30 workers on board the vessel, with an equal number of navigation workers as seismologists/geophysicists. When a 2D seismic survey is recorded, the vessel passes along a line usually towing between 1 and 3 cables. When a 3D survey is performed, the vessel tows many more cables and travels back and forth until a volume of data is recorded. As in land seismic operations, data is collected in 3D bins (slide 22 seismic resolution pdf). Gas fields today are quite readily observed on seismic sections as bright spots (slide 7 seismic resolution pdf) because they appear as a large spot of white at the top of structures or against faults. This is because they have a large but negative Reflection Coefficient amplitude anomaly compared with other rocks around them. These should not be confused with tuned images, which occur when the reflections from two beds get so close (because the beds are thin) that they tune-in (slide 7 seismic resolution pdf) and constructively interfere thereby increasing the amplitude of their total reflectivity. Also, they can tune-out their reflection where a positive wavelet of one reflection destructive interferes with the negative wavelet of the reflection above or below. We can see a gas sand on an AVO plot (which is the CMP zero-offset amplitude versus the rate of change in reflection amplitude across the CMP traces for any reflection event), and this most often appears in the bottom left quadrant of the plot because it usually has a negative Reflection Coefficient. When an oil field containing a gas cap (Position 1) depletes its gas, the AVO reflectivity moves towards the oil line (Position 2). If we now inject (incompressible) water to enhance oil recovery, the AVO plot would move towards the fluid (water) line. Note top right quadrant is for reflections from the base sand.