Same Data, Different Results – The Apples and Oranges of Microseismic Data Processing

Having had a total of seven microseismic projects to date, PDO are in the unique situation were they have microseismic data acquired from a given field independently analyzed or processed by more than one party. For one field, identical data processed by two vendors gave very different results, both in number of events and their locations for the same recording period. For another field, the scattered data is believed to be correct whereby the nicely aligned data was found to be unreliable after a quality check. These differences raise many questions regarding MS data processing: why are these results different and are the differences a result of bad processing or different methodology used? We find that there are several factors for the differences including the processing methodology, the input data and the MS event screening and characterizing process used by the different vendors. Specific input and direction from the client are useful to ensure such discrepancies are reduced.<br>