Exxonmobil Upstream Research Company

Alan E Schwartzbard

Yao-Chou Cheng

Brian P West

John A Farre

Structural and stratigraphic discontinuities are identified in a 3-D volume of seismic data samples, by first selecting a plurality of directions containing a primary direction and at least one secondary direction. Next, one-dimensional, two-trace first discontinuity values are calculated along the primary direction for each seismic data sample in the 3-D data volume. Next, a series of sequentially less restrictive thresholds is defined, such that a significant portion, preferably at least approximately 10%, of the first discontinuity values satisfy the first threshold. This significant portion of first discontinuity values is then stored in an output discontinuity volume at the corresponding sample locations. The following steps are repeated for each remaining data sample until that sample has a value stored at the corresponding sample location in the output discontinuity volume. First, one-dimensional, two-trace discontinuity values are calculated for the sample sequentially along the secondary directions and the first of the calculated discontinuity values satisfying the first threshold is stored in the output volume. If none of the calculated discontinuity values satisfies the first threshold, then, the next less restrictive threshold in the series of thresholds is selected. Finally, the discontinuity values calculated along the primary and secondary directions are compared sequentially to the selected threshold and the first of the discontinuity values that satisfies the selected threshold is stored in the output discontinuity volume.

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Houston, TX, United States of America

Alan E Schwartzbard