Multicomponent seismic analysis from an oil sands field, Alberta, Canada

Bobby J. Gunning

Seismic acquisition in the Athabasca Oil Sands increasingly utilizes three-component geophones. However, the vertical component data are generally are processed and interpreted, but the horizontal component data are often left unprocessed. In this project, we demonstrate that there are many geological interpretations that can be improved through joint analysis and inversion of the vertical and radial geophone component data. In this study, the processing of the vertical and radial geophone component data from an Alberta oil sands field yielded good quality PP and PS seismic volumes. The main reservoir interval, the McMurray Formation, was found to have marginal reflection quality on the PP seismic data and good reflection quality on the PS seismic data. Post-stack, pre-stack and joint inversion provided data volumes which, when correlated to geological control and yielded spatial distributions of good reservoir facies.