Geomechanics of faults: impacts on seismic imaging

Gary Couples, Jingsheng Ma, Helen Lewis, Peter Olden, Juan Quijano, Tomi Fasae, and Rebecca Maguire, from Heriot-Watt Institute of Petroleum Engineering, describe several ways in which the role of rock deformation can affect the imaging and interpretation of faults. Seismic investigations represent one of the major means of characterizing the spatial variability of reservoirs. Maps may show several regions of distinctive seismic attributes within an interval; these can assist in resolving the depositional and diagenetic patterns of the reservoir, and in building constrained geomodels of the inter-well regions. The shape of the reservoir can be mapped, and the larger faults that disrupt it can be delineated in terms of their horizon intersections, and their displacements.