Seismic-fluid detection-a review

Since the advent of seismic imaging techniques, the dream of geophysicists has been to identify the fluid effect and be able to accurately map hydrocarbon from the brine within a target reservoir. The usage of bright spots (strong reflection amplitudes) as an indicator of hydrocarbon was the earliest recognition of the direct role played by the pore fluids in seismic signatures. Further development of new techniques had a strong correlation with the increase in computing power and advances in seismic acquisition and processing techniques. In this review, we touch upon the relevant theory developed more than 100 years ago, and then review the methods developed over five decades leading to the quantitative interpretation of seismic data for fluid detection. We also carried out a case study to compare selected fluid identification methods applied to a complex reservoir within an oil and gas field in the Barents Sea. The impedance-based methods “CPEI-Curved Pseudo-elastic Impedance” and “LMR-Lambda-Mu-Rho” inversion provided better results compared to other techniques, highlighting the critical influence anomalous lithologies have on such screening attributes.