Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Geophysics (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Advisor 1

Wayne D. Pennington

Committee Member 1

Roger M. Turpening

Committee Member 2

Roohollah (Radwin) Askari

Abstract

This study analyzes hydrocarbon reservoirs by using Amplitude-Versus-Offset (AVO) analysis and different inversion methods to investigate hydrocarbon reservoir in the Thrace Basin which is located in northwest Turkey.

A 3D seismic survey containing prestack data was provided by Turkish Petroleum Corporation as true amplitude NMO corrected 3D gathers.

The quality of this land data was poor for AVO applications, and steps were taken to make it useful. Radon filtering proved to be extremely useful for this purpose. Although application of this filter affected the AVO characteristics differently depending on the parameters selected for the filter, relative AVO characteristics remained useful for moderate filters.

This use of this data for prestack interpretation was undertaken in two parts. AVO analysis of the amplitude trends in the prestack gathers provided insight into rock properties and anomalous behavior, apparently related to hydrocarbon content. Prestack simultaneous inversion was also applied to the data, yielding images of the elastic properties of the potential reservoir rock.

While it remains uncertain whether or not the anomalies observed represent hydrocarbon deposits of economic quality, this study does demonstrate that the data quality in this survey is sufficient to identify anomalies that are consistent with hydrocarbon-bearing zones. The use of prestack processing techniques, particularly the Radon filter, improves the signal-to-noise ratio, allowing use of AVO studies and prestack inversion, but it also decreases the range of AVO differences, limiting the use of traditional AVO guidelines, but the relative differences between background and potential pay remain observable.

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