3-D AVO and migration

David Gray*, Veritas GeoServices Ltd.; Taiwen Chen and Bill Goodway, PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd.

Introduction The use of AVO is being extended from pure stratigraphic into combined stratigraphicstructural areas like the North Sea. As a result, migration is being used in conjunction with AVO (Tura and Rowbotham 1996; Lindsay and Ratcliff, 1996; Boztas et al, 1997; Nickerson et al, 1997). The purpose of this presentation is to evaluate various migration methods to determine which are suitable for AVO. Method The effects of different migrations on AVO are tested using a relatively unstructured data set. In these data, the differences between the migrated and unmigrated data are minimal because the migration does not move data very far. Therefore, any significant differences in AVO must be primarily due to the amplitude preserving effects of the migration. Results are compared to AVO derived from NMO only gathers, which have good correlation to well control. Two 3-D data volumes meeting these criteria were provided for these tests. These are the Shorncliffe 3-D (Gray, 1997) and the Crowfoot 3-D (Chen et al., 1997). In both volumes, images of channels cut into flat-lying sediments are used to determine how well the migration methods are preserving the AVO. The Shorncliffe 3-D is used to test different migration algorithms, following the work of Gray (1997). The effectiveness of the migrations is tested by the delineation of a channel at 0.7 s. The Crowfoot 3-D is used to test the order to best apply pre-stack interpolation (PSI), prestack time migration (PSTM) and AVO to the data. Simple Kirchhoff PSTM (KM) and common offset PSTM (COM) are used. The targets are Lower Cretaceous, Glauconitic and Lithic channels containing gas. This 3-D has extensive well control (Chen et al, 1997, 1998). Discussion Shorncliffe 3-D - Time slices of stacks (Fig. 1) show little difference between the migrations. However, the AVO gradients show significant differences (Fig. 2). The COM gradient displays the channel better than the NMO only gradient.

The gradients derived from the other gathers display the channel very poorly. There is an insignificant difference between the COM with and without interpolation suggesting PSI is not responsible for the improved results. a) b) c) d)

Fig. 1. Shorncliffe amplitudes: Time slices showing the channel. The methods are a) NMO only, b) KM (N-S stripe was unmigrated), c) common offset migration with interpolation (COMI) and d) COM. a) b) c) d)

Fig. 2. Shorncliffe gradient: slices showing the channel. The methods used are a) NMO only, b) KM, c) COMI and d) COM. Crowfoot 3-D Horizon slices (Figure 3) show subtle differences depending on the PSImigration-AVO flow used. The delineation of the oval shape just above the center of the section and anomaly just below and to the left of it in the necktie shape running NNW-SSE is the goal. These locations are known to contain gas. The COM PSTM show better imaging of these features in the amplitude slices. These differences are also evident in the Fluid Factor (Smith and Gidlow; 1987) in Figure 4. The Fluid Factor discriminates between the high amplitudes caused by gas in the channel and those caused by shales in the SW of the survey. The upper part of the necktie shaped anomaly and the oval anomaly are better defined when PSI is applied prior to the migration.

Conclusions Better AVO attributes are derived after COM. Interpolation of the data prior to COM appears to make subtle improvements in the AVO for the Crowfoot 3-D. Kirchhoff PSTM is to be avoided in AVO analysis unless it is explicitly amplitude preserving. a) b)

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. for permission to use their data and PanCanadian and Veritas GeoServices for making this presentation possible. References Boztas, M., McHugo, S. and Clark, D., 1997, The challenges of preparing seismic data for stratigraphic analysis - a North Sea case study, 1997 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 163-166. Chen, T., Goodway, W.N. and Gray, F.D., 1997, 3D AVO case study: pre-stack amplitude calibration using walkaway VSP, 1997 CSEG Meeting Abstracts, 152-154. Chen, T., Goodway, W.N., Zhang, W., Potocki, D., Uswak, G., Calow, B. and Gray, F.D., 1998, Integrating Geophysics, Geology and Petrophysics: A 3D seismic AVO and borehole / logging case study, 1998 CSEG Meeting Abstracts, 152-154. Gray, F.D., 1997, Prestack migration, NMO or DMO: Which is best for 3-D AVO, 1997 CSEG Meeting Abstracts, 158-162. Hilterman, F.J., Sherwood, J.W.C., Schellhorn, R., Bankhead, B., and DeVault, B., 1996, Detection of hydrocarbons with lithostratigraphy: 1996 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 1751-1754. Lindsay, R.O., and Ratcliff, D.W., 1996, 3D subsalt AVO, 1996 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 1763-1766 Mosher, C.C., Keho, T.H., Weglein, A.B. and Foster, D.J., 1996, The impact of migration on AVO, Geophysics, 61, 6, 1603-1615. Nickerson, R.L., Cambois, G. and Weyer, J.P., 1997, A successful AVO case study from marginal 3D land data, 1997 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 167-170. Smith, G.C. and Gidlow, P. M., 1987, Weighted stacking for rock property estimation and detection of gas, Geophysical Prospecting, 35, pp. 993-1014. Tura, A. and Rowbotham, P., 1996, Velocity model estimation and AVO migration / inversion in nonbright-spot areas 1996 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 1771-1774. Tura, A., Hanitzsch, C. and Calandra, H., 1997, 3-D AVO migration/inversion of field data, 1997 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 215-217. Van Wijngaarden, A.J. and Berkhout, A.J., 1997, AVA analysis after seismic migration, 1997 SEG Meeting Abstracts, 179-182.

c)

d)

Fig. 3. Crowfoot P-wave amplitude slices at the zone of interest: a) AVO, interpolation; b) interpolation, COM, AVO; c) COM, interpolation, AVO and d) AVO, interpolation, post-stack migration. a) b)

c)

Fig. 4. Crowfoot - Fluid Factor slices at the zone of interest: a) AVO, interpolation, b) interpolation, COM, AVO and c) COM, interpolation, AVO. AVO, interpolation, migration was not performed on these data.