Improved Salt Body Delineation Using a new Structure Extraction Workflow

Current salt imaging workflows require thorough geological understanding in the selection of seismic attributes used to delineate salt bodies. Often, steep flanks and base of salt show low amplitude and may be masked by multiples. We developed a new method to improve delineation of salt boundaries. We propose a step-by-step approach starting with the seismic amplitude cube rendered as a semitransparent volume, which is helpful in judging the success of subsequent attribute-based results, even with little geological background information and also helps to identify weak reflections at the surface of the salt bodies. In the second step, structural sharpening of the seismic data using the structurally sharpened continuous color (SRGB) process helps to delineate the complete surface of the salt bodies through spatial coherence, which is more consistent in the vertical direction than the standard attributes offered by commercially available software packages. Ant tracking on the structurally sharpened seismic amplitude cube provides the internal structure of the salt bodies and confirms the outer structure already mapped by SRGB. The texture of the top of salt may then be revealed by interactive crossplot analysis with the resultant geobody textured with SRGB output.