Handling Seismic Anomalies in Multiple Segment Prospects - Explicit Modeling of Anomaly Indicator Correlation

Seismic anomalies such as a flat spot, conformance and AVO are now extensively used to de-risk exploration targets. The Bayesian Risk Modification (BRM) approach allows the exploration team to take into account in a rigorous statistical framework how an anomaly should boost the chance of success (COS) of an exploration target. It further provides a framework for assessing COS and resources for prospects with multiple targets with seismic anomalies. One problem with the current prospect assessment workflow, however, is that the approach relies on an assumption that the seismic anomaly indicators are independent across the different targets in the prospect. We present a new prospect-level BRM approach that extends the existing methodology by introducing a new parameter that captures the degree of correlation between the seismic anomalies on the targets in the prospect. We present the new methodology and we illustrate its application to a realistic exploration situation. We further provide guidelines about how this parameter should be set in an optimal way, and which are its implications when estimating the prospect COS. We conclude with a summary and a discussion.