Published as Interpretation, 6, No. 2, T449-T455, (2018)

Predictive painting across faults

Zhiguang Xue, Xinming Wu, and Sergey Fomel

Abstract:

Predictive painting can effectively spread information in 3D volumes following the local structures (dips) of seismic events. However, it has troubles spreading information across faults with significant displacement. To address this problem, we propose to incorporate fault slip information into predictive painting to correctly spread information across faults. The fault slip is obtained by using a local similarity scan to measure local shifts of the different sides of a fault. We propose three different methods to utilize the fault slip information: 1) area partition method, which uses fault slip to correct the painting result after predictive painting in each divided area; 2) fault-zone replacement method, which replaces fault zones with smooth transitions calculated with the fault slip information to avoid sharp jumps; and 3) unfaulting method, where we use the fault slip information to unfault the volume, perform predictive painting in the unfaulted domain, and then map the painting result back to the original space. The proposed methods are tested in application of predictive painting to horizon picking. Numerical examples demonstrate that predictive painting after incorporating fault slip information can correctly spread information across faults, which makes the proposed three approaches of utilizing fault slip information effective and applicable.