As seismic waves travel through the earth, the visco-elasticity of the earth's medium will cause energy dissipation and waveform distortion. This phenomenon is referred to as seismic absorption or attenuation. The absorptive property of a medium can be described by a quality factor Q, which determines the energy decay and a velocity dispersion relationship. Four new ideas have been developed in this thesis to deal with the estimation and application of seismic absorption. By assuming that the amplitude spectrum of a seismic wavelet may be modeled by that of a Ricker wavelet, an analytical relation has been derived to estimate a quality factor from the seismic data peak frequency variation with time. This relation plays a central role in quality factor estimation problems. To estimate interval Q for reservoir description, a method called reflectivity guided seismic attenuation analysis is proposed. This method first estimates peak frequencies at a common midpoint location, then correlates the peak frequency with sparsely-distributed reflectivities, and finally calculates Q values from the peak frequencies at the reflectivity locations. The peak frequency is estimated from the prestack CMP gather using peak frequency variation with offset analysis which is similar to amplitude variation with offset analysis in implementation. The estimated Q section has the same layer boundaries of the acoustic impedance or other layer properties. Therefore, the seismic attenuation property obtained with the guide of reflectivity is easy to interpret for the purpose of reservoir description. To overcome the instability problem of conventional inverse Q filtering, Q compensation is formulated as a least-squares (LS) inverse problem based on statistical theory. The matrix of forward modeling is composed of time-variant wavelets. The LS de-absorption is solved by an iterative non-parametric approach. To compensate for absorption in migrated seismic sections, a refocusing technique is developed using non-stationary multi-dimensional deconvolution. A numerical method is introduced to calculate the blurring function in layered media, and a least squares inverse scheme is used to remove the blurring effect in order to refocus the migrated image. This refocusing process can be used as an alternative to regular migration with absorption compensation.

As seismic waves travel through the earth, the visco-elasticity of the earth's medium will cause energy dissipation and waveform distortion. This phenomenon is referred to as seismic absorption or attenuation. The absorptive property of a medium can be described by a quality factor Q, which determines the energy decay and a velocity dispersion relationship. Four new ideas have been developed in this thesis to deal with the estimation and application of seismic absorption. By assuming that the amplitude spectrum of a seismic wavelet may be modeled by that of a Ricker wavelet, an analytical relation has been derived to estimate a quality factor from the seismic data peak frequency variation with time. This relation plays a central role in quality factor estimation problems. To estimate interval Q for reservoir description, a method called reflectivity guided seismic attenuation analysis is proposed. This method first estimates peak frequencies at a common midpoint location, then correlates the peak frequency with sparsely-distributed reflectivities, and finally calculates Q values from the peak frequencies at the reflectivity locations. The peak frequency is estimated from the prestack CMP gather using peak frequency variation with offset analysis which is similar to amplitude variation with offset analysis in implementation. The estimated Q section has the same layer boundaries of the acoustic impedance or other layer properties. Therefore, the seismic attenuation property obtained with the guide of reflectivity is easy to interpret for the purpose of reservoir description. To overcome the instability problem of conventional inverse Q filtering, Q compensation is formulated as a least-squares (LS) inverse problem based on statistical theory. The matrix of forward modeling is composed of time-variant wavelets. The LS de-absorption is solved by an iterative non-parametric approach. To compensate for absorption in migrated seismic sections, a refocusing technique is developed using non-stationary multi-dimensional deconvolution. A numerical method is introduced to calculate the blurring function in layered media, and a least squares inverse scheme is used to remove the blurring effect in order to refocus the migrated image. This refocusing process can be used as an alternative to regular migration with absorption compensation.

As seismic waves travel through the earth, the visco-elasticity of the earth's medium will cause energy dissipation and waveform distortion. This phenomenon is referred to as seismic absorption or attenuation. The absorptive property of a medium can be described by a quality factor Q, which determines the energy decay and a velocity dispersion relationship. Four new ideas have been developed in this thesis to deal with the estimation and application of seismic absorption. By assuming that the amplitude spectrum of a seismic wavelet may be modeled by that of a Ricker wavelet, an analytical relation has been derived to estimate a quality factor from the seismic data peak frequency variation with time. This relation plays a central role in quality factor estimation problems. To estimate interval Q for reservoir description, a method called reflectivity guided seismic attenuation analysis is proposed. This method first estimates peak frequencies at a common midpoint location, then correlates the peak frequency with sparsely-distributed reflectivities, and finally calculates Q values from the peak frequencies at the reflectivity locations. The peak frequency is estimated from the prestack CMP gather using peak frequency variation with offset analysis which is similar to amplitude variation with offset analysis in implementation. The estimated Q section has the same layer boundaries of the acoustic impedance or other layer properties. Therefore, the seismic attenuation property obtained with the guide of reflectivity is easy to interpret for the purpose of reservoir description. To overcome the instability problem of conventional inverse Q filtering, Q compensation is formulated as a least-squares (LS) inverse problem based on statistical theory. The matrix of forward modeling is composed of time-variant wavelets. The LS de-absorption is solved by an iterative non-parametric approach. To compensate for absorption in migrated seismic sections, a refocusing technique is developed using non-stationary multi-dimensional deconvolution. A numerical method is introduced to calculate the blurring function in layered media, and a least squares inverse scheme is used to remove the blurring effect in order to refocus the migrated image. This refocusing process can be used as an alternative to regular migration with absorption compensation. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

Acquisition and interpretation of 3-D seismic data led DeAngelo and Hardage (2001) to describe the channel system in the south central Cut Bank area in Glacier County, Montana. The presence of a low velocity layer called Bentonite was also discovered in the area with the help of well-logs. Bentonite is a volcanic ash, which lies on both sides of the channel system and is absent within the channel. DeAngelo and Hardage (2001) shot a vertical seismic profiling (VSP) survey at well # 54-8 to analyze the formation structure in depth, since seismic signals around the reservoir area were unclear in the 3-D survey. This research attempts to estimate the attenuation properties of the Bentonite layer in the Cut Bank oil field. VSP data is processed for velocity information and estimation of seismic Q using the spectral ratios method (SRM). The SRM theoretically assumes that the propagating signal is a plane seismic wave traveling vertically from one point to another in a homogeneous model. The amplitudes at the start and end points are known and relate to each other with the attenuation coefficient in a frequency range. The relation between the seismic amplitudes at z distance from each other can be expressed as a linear function of frequency after a few modifications. SRM uses the linearity of the logarithmic ratio of the seismic amplitudes over a frequency range. In theory, ratios plotted against a frequency range must produce a flat line. However, in practice, the logarithmic ratios are expected to draw an approximate line (curve), where some of the data points deviate from the origin of the line. Thus fitting a line to the ratios curve and calculating the slope of this curve are necessary. Slope of the curve relates to the seismic attenuation coefficient and further to the seismic Q. The SRM results suggest that Bentonite may have a Q value as low as 5. This highly attenuative and thin (20 to 40 feet throughout the south central Cut Bank Unit) layer alters seismic signals propagating through it. A thorough analysis of the amplitude spectra suggests that seismic signals dramatically lose their energy when they pass through Bentonite. Low energy content of the signals below the Bentonite layer highlights that the recovery of the seismic energy is less likely despite the presence of multiples, which are known to affect the seismic signals constructively. Therefore, separation of reflected events is a greater challenge for the thin reservoir sand units lying underneath the Bentonite layer. Thus the Bentonite layer in the Cut Bank oil field has to be taken seriously and data processing should be done accordingly for better accuracy.