HYDROCARBON DETECTION WITH PASSIVE SEISMIC DATA

摘要

Method for using seismic data fromearthquakes to address the low frequency lacunaproblem in traditional hydrocarbon explorationmethods. Seismometers with frequency responsedown to about 1 Hz are placed over a targetsubsur-face region in an array with spacing suitable forhy-drocarbon exploration (21). Data are collected overa long (weeks or months) time period (22).Seg-ments of the data (44) are identified with knownevents from earthquake catalogs (43). Those datasegments are analyzed using techniques such astrav-eltime delay measurements (307) or receiverfunc-tion calculations (46) and then are combined withone or more other types of geophysical data acquiredfrom the target region, using joint inversion(308-310) in some embodiments of the method, toinfer physical features of the subsurface indicative ofhydrocarbon potential or lack thereof (26).