The complete paper proposes an azimuthal plane-wave-destruction (AzPWD) seismic-diffraction-imaging work flow to efficiently emphasize small-scale features associated with subsurface discontinuities such as faults, channel edges, and fracture swarms and to determine their orientation by properly accounting for edge-diffraction phenomena. The work flow is applied to characterize an unconventional tight-gas-sand reservoir in the Cooper Basin in Western Australia. Extracted orientations of edges provide valuable additional information, which can be used by the interpreter to locate finer-scale features and distinguish them from noise.

Introduction

Unconventional reservoirs may exhibit high structural variability, which is difficult to characterize with a discrete wells network. 3D reflection seismology allows the extraction of additional information about the subsurface with significantly denser spatial sampling intervals. However, conventional images of the subsurface have low spatial resolution and are dominated by continuous and smooth reflections, which carry the information associated with only large-scale heterogeneities.

Diffraction images are more capable than conventional reflection images in emphasizing small-scale features associated with subsurface discontinuities. Many studies employ diffraction images as a source of additional information for interpretation. Past work has proposed an AzPWD work flow, which extends a plane-wave destruction diffraction imaging framework to account for edge-diffraction orientation and allows efficient extraction of these orientations on the basis of scanning of different azimuths.