Advanced Seismic Data Interpretation for Carbonate Targets Based on Optimized Processing Techniques

Seismic data from the shelf area of the Cretaceous Shu’aiba Formation in Abu Dhabi is used to investigate stratigraphic and structural seismic anomalies. The data consists of a 2-D grid of seismic lines, acquired in the late 1980s and 1993. The data was reprocessed in several phases. The first phase consists of standard time domain processing upto final Dip Move Out stack and migration. In the second phase, a macro-velocity model for post-stack depth migration is generated and tested by the interpreters. The third phase is the interpretation of the pre-stack depth migration stack. Due to the structural irregularity of the Shu’aiba Formation, the pre-stack depth migrated data is considered the most reliable for Amplitude Versus Offset analysis. Further steps are L-1 deconvolution followed by Born Inversion. These last steps are required before the lithology can be modeled with high-resolution. The final lithological model is verified by applying forward modeling. The lithological model forms the basis for reservoir and geostatistical evaluations which account for heterogeneities.