Structural smoothing on mixed instantaneous phase energy for automatic fault and horizon picking: case study on F3 North Sea

Abstract

Today, with the development of 3-D studies and the increase in seismic data volume, there is a growing need to expand interpretation techniques for achieving higher speed and accuracy of interpretation tasks. Determining seismic faults and horizons is vital to accomplish the process as one of the essential stages of data interpretation. With the recent development of computational methods in seismic interpretation and their benefits, different approaches have been promoted. The specialist can make the understanding much faster with higher accuracy. In this research, a fully automated dual horizon and fault selection approach in the presence of semi-vertical faults is presented using a structural smoothing condition. Geological faults make it challenging to map sedimentary layers appropriately which is targeted for review in this work. Unlike Image processing techniques that determine the location of faults only, the proposed approach gives the benefit of the estimated fault displacement. In this method, faults are modeled as a displacement vector field. Despite traditional methods (such as similarity and coherence), in this method, the vector field of the estimated fault displacement determines the displacement and its location. This vector field can be used for auto-determination of fault-related layers displacement. As a result, automatic horizon picking in the presence of such faults is possible, thereby simplifying the mapping of sedimentary layers.