W041

Faults and Fracture Detection based on Seismic

Surface Orthogonal Decomposition
I.I. Priezzhev (Schlumberger Information Solution) & A. Scollard*
(Schlumberger Information Solution)

SUMMARY
A new technology using the latent structure analysis of seismic surface data under conditions of strong
noise is proposed. Since the noise has no correlation with faults or other latent features it stands out as
separate orthogonal components. For the same reasons, the individual principal components will be for
footprints. Another advantage of the proposed method is the possibility to separate results of different
geological processes (factors) that are creating orthogonal (uncorrelated) features on the surface. The
technology can be applied to unconventional resources exploration and to detection of fracture corridors in
carbonates under strong noise conditions included dip water and sub salt exploration. The proposed
technology can also be used to analyze the amplitudes of the seismic slices or stratigraphic slices including
sets of several slices.

74th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-7 June 2012
Introduction

A new method of detecting subtle faults, fractures, and similar features involves the analysis of the latent
structure of the seismic surface. The basic methods of such analysis are calculation of the first or second
derivative of the function of the two-dimensional surface. Such calculations are done in various ways,
such as the parameters of the form of the first derivative, is a local angle and azimuth angle (Dalley et al.,
1989; Marfurt, 2006) or calculating the gradient or local anomalies with various ways of
averaging. Parameters forming the second derivative are different measures of curvature of the surface or
seismic volume under study: the minimum, maximum, Gaussian curvature, and others (Flynn and Jain,
1989, Roberts, 2001; Chopra and Marfurt, 2007). Faults, fracture corridors, or fracture zones are usually
reflected in seismic data as incoherent high-frequency features on cross sections and as lineaments on
slices or on seismic surfaces. A common problem for conventional technologies is the noise and
acquisition footprint sensibility because these also exist in the high-frequency seismic data. To eliminate
the noise and footprint influence in results usually requires different methods of filtration or smoothing. As
a result of the noise, footprints can be removed from the seismic data but at the same time the fault and
fracture reflections also will be removed.
The theory of the proposed technology for analyzing the latent structure of seismic reflecting horizons
through surface orthogonal decomposition is based on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), also
known as Karhunen–Loeve decomposition or principal component analysis (PCA) (Pearson, 1901; Liang
et al., 2002; Rathinam and Petzold, 2003; Luo et al., 2007). The method is a powerful tool of data analysis
aimed at obtaining a low-dimensional approximate description of some high-dimensional processes. The
main idea of this method is the decomposition of the set of snapshots on the orthogonal components.
According to POD terminology, a snapshot represents a collection of N measurements times a certain state
variable. In our case, for surface analyses a snapshot must be defined for every node and include all values
for nodes inside some radius around this node. The radius should be bigger than the correlation radius of
the autocorrelation function corresponding to the surface.
Orthogonal decomposition based on PCA is widely used in the analysis of geologic and geophysical
data. Commonly PCA is used to analyze multidimensional measurements to reduce the dimension and for
latent factor analysis (Nikitin, 1986 and Nikitin and Petrov, 2010; Koval, Priezzhev and Ovcharenko, 1984
and 1987). PCA is also used for the analysis of images, including images of the seismic wave field
(Scheevel and Payrazyan, 1999). (Nikitin, 1986 ; Nikitin and Petrov, 2010) also used first principal
component in moving windows for optimal adaptive filtration.

Method

We propose to use PCA to analyze the hidden structure of seismic reflecting horizons by expanding these
horizons into orthogonal components, based on the computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of two-
dimensional autocorrelation function of the original surface. The main idea of this method is the
decomposition of the surface on the orthogonal components (principal components) from its two-
dimensional autocorrelation function. Each orthogonal component is also a surface, and their sum is equal
to the original surface. Orthogonality means that the correlation coefficient between any two components
will be about zero. The calculation of principal components reduces to the calculation of eigenvectors and
eigenvalues of two-dimensional autocorrelation function of the original surface. It is assumed sorting the
principal component by their contribution to the total variance (amplitude) of the studied surface. At the
core of PCA is this equation:

  T C ,

where C is the covariance matrix for the multidimensional vector X. In our case C is a two-dimensional
autocorrelation function and the vector X is the depth (time) of the surface at a given moving window.
 is the matrix of eigenvectors that are orthogonal to each other, and  is the diagonal matrix of
eigenvalues. The main property of the PCA is that the eigenvectors, which correspond to principal
components, are uncorrelated, which is equivalent to orthogonality. The eigenvector corresponding to the
maximum eigenvalue of the covariance matrix determines the first principal component, which is

74th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-7 June 2012
considered a background factor. As practice shows, the first principal component accounts for up to 99%
of the variance of the studied surface. The following major components are connected with local
peculiarities of the surface, and extended linear elements can be explained as a manifestation of the fault
structures. Since the noise has no correlation with faults or other latent features it stands out as separate
principal components. By the same reasoning, the individual principal components will be footprints.
Computations are organized so that the following decomposition of the original surface into orthogonal
components whose sum is equal to the original surface. A unit of these components is equal to the unit of
the original surface (milliseconds or meters).

Synthetic example

Figure 1-1 shows a synthetic model surface with faults without noise. The faults were added to the surface
with amplitude 1/1000 to surface amplitude. Figure 1-2 shows a model surface with noise that was used as
input to fault detection algorithms. The noise was added according to Gaussian law with standard deviation
equal to 1/1000 of the surface amplitude. Therefore the amplitude of noise is the same as the amplitude of
faults on the surface. Figures 1-3 and 1-4 show that the result of use of conventional algorithms on 1-3 is
local angles and on 1-4 is minimal curvatures.

1) 2) 3) 4)

5) 6) 7) 8)

Figure 1 -1) Model surface and faults, -2) Model surface with faults and noise, -3) Local angles, -4)
Minimum curvature, -5) Autocorrelation function, -6) First, -7) Second, and -8) Third orthogonal
components.

Figure 1-5 shows the 2D autocorrelation function calculated by model surface with faults and noise (see 1-
2). It is clear that the first orthogonal component (1-6) is the restored model surface without noise, and on
the second and third orthogonal components (1-7, 1-8) can be seen the faults that were on the source
model surface. On the map with minimum curvatures and local angles (1-3, 1-4) we cannot see the same
result.

Unconventional resources exploration

In gas shales and oil shales it is very difficult to detect faults and fractures using seismic data. The main
problem is the noisy land seismic data, which must be smoothed. To get an unsmoothed surface we apply a
whitening procedure to the source cube (Priezzhev, 2010a , 2010b) and use autotracking to get an
unsmoothed surface for analyses (Figures 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6). Results show very good
correspondence to microseismic data (Figures 2-7, 2-8).

74th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-7 June 2012
1) 2) 3)

4) 5) 6)

7) 8) 9)

Figure 2 - 1) Montney (courtesy WesternGeco) seismic cross section, -2) Amplitude spectrum of source
seismic, -3) Top of shale surface according source seismic, -4) Seismic data after whitening, -5) Amplitude
spectrum after whitening, -6) Top of shale according seismic data after whitening, -7) Second orthogonal
component -8) Third orthogonal components and -9) Fourth orthogonal component (noise and footprint).
Surface pictures (2-6,2-7,2-8,2-9) also show microseismic data results in the shale layer.

Carbonates example

Figure 3 shows results of analyses of the seismic data surface calculated at the top of carbonates, which
were performed using different technologies. On the third orthogonal component are lineaments, which
can be explained as fracture corridors.

1) 2) 3)

Figure 3 - 1) Local angles, -2) Minimum curvatures, and -3) Third orthogonal component calculated by
top of carbonates.

74th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-7 June 2012
Conclusions

A new technology using the latent structure analysis of seismic surface data under conditions of strong noise
is proposed. Since the noise has no correlation with faults or other latent features it stands out as separate
principal (orthogonal) components. For the same reasons, the individual principal components will be for
footprints. Another advantage of the proposed method is the possibility to separate results of different
geological processes (factors) that are creating orthogonal (uncorrelated) features on the surface. The
technology can be applied to unconventional resources exploration and to detection of fracture corridors in
carbonates under strong noise conditions included dip water and sub salt exploration. The proposed
technology can also be used to analyze the amplitudes of the seismic slices or stratigraphic slices including
sets of several slices.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Schlumberger for the opportunity to spend the time necessary to develop this technique
and also for permission to publish the results of the work.

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74th EAGE Conference & Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-7 June 2012