Deep Learning to maximize the value of fast-track 4D seismic processing
Arnab Dhara*
1
, Haron Abdel-Raziq*
1
, Denis Kiyashchenko
2
, Asiya Kudarova
2
, Janaki Vamaraju
1
, Albena
Mateeva
2
, Pandu Devarakota
1
, Kanglin Wang
2
, Jorge Lopez
3
1
Shell Global Solutions (US) Inc.,
2
Shell International Exploration and Production Inc.,
3
Shell Brasil Petróleo
Ltda
Summary
Time lapse seismic monitoring plays a vital role in reservoir
management. However, extracting such value requires
dedicated acquisition, co-processing, and interpretation of
multiple seismic vintages to highlight possibly small 4D
changes, such as those expected in stiff reservoir rocks.
While the standard full production processing is laborious
and time consuming, the fast-track processing can be
available in few weeks and the results are valuable for early
interpretation insights and to inform possible actions related
to well operations and field development. However, the
signal fidelity of fast-track processing is usually low and
may be incapable of identifying accurately subtle 4D signals.
This may lead to misinterpretations, missed opportunities,
and negatively impact decisions. In this paper we discuss
novel methods using deep learning to generate denoised 4D
attributes from fast-track processing products. We formulate
the problem as an image-to-image translation and introduce
a custom loss function to generate meaningful attributes for
the reservoir zone. In addition, we show how real data can
be augmented with data from a reservoir simulation volume
and used as input for training. We demonstrate the efficacy
of methodologies on Brazilian pre-salt 4D seismic dataset.
Introduction
Time-lapse seismic is an important tool for reservoir
monitoring (Calvert, 2005), with multiple applications to
better understand production-related changes (Tura and
Lumley, 1999), enhanced oil recovery processes (Ditkof et
al., 2013), field development, and carbon sequestration
(Egorov et al., 2017). Recently, time-lapse seismic achieved
success in monitoring the deep and stiff reservoirs of the
Brazilian pre-salt (Kiyashchenko et al. 2020, Cruz et al.
2021). This became possible by ensuring high survey
repeatability using OBN acquisition and a new 4D compliant
processing workflow that ensures minimal time-lapse noise.
The turnaround time of conventional OBN processing may
be many months, while recovery of challenging 4D signals
requires beating the noise, which may increase the timeline
further. This paper leverages deep convolutional neural
networks (CNN) to reduce the turnaround time by denoising
time-lapse attributes derived from intermediate (fast-track)
processing results. Early 4D signal insights can be valuable
for timely decisions. CNNs have recently achieved success
in many computer vision tasks including natural image
super-resolution and denoising (Lim et al., 2017; Dai et al.,
2019). Although numerous applications of deep learning
have been proposed for seismic image denoising and super-
resolution (Li et al., 2021), the application of such
techniques to 4D processing has been limited (Duan et al.,
2020; Alali et al., 2020). Unlike 3D processing, the objective
of 4D processing is to highlight subtle 4D differences
between two vintages acquired at different times over a
producing field. Moreover, unlike natural images, the
number of training samples in the field of 4D seismic is
small. In this work, we are limited to a single time-lapse
vintage with one baseline and one monitor survey. This
restricts us to training on data from outside the reservoir, to
show that our approach provides key denoising and signal
recognition in the most important area of interest, the
reservoir. To maximize the value of fast-track 4D seismic
processing, we propose to train a neural network using full
track processing results from previous vintage. To improve
CNN learning capabilities, we devise a custom loss function
which is a combination of L1 loss and L1 loss with focus on
maximum signal values. To address the problem of limited
training samples, we augment the training data with
realistically simulated data that provide the deep neural
network with information on signal estimates in the
reservoir, as this 4D signal is not present in training data
from outside the reservoir.
Dataset used in this study
The dataset used in this study is from the Brazilian Santos
basin, where the water depth ranges from 2000 to 2200 m.
The pre-salt carbonate reservoir is covered by a massive salt
body having locally a rugose top, with internally stratified
salt sequences (see Fig. 1). The 4D OBN seismic survey was
acquired in 2015/2017. The porosity of the reservoir ranges
from 5 to 15% which, in addition to a stiff rock framework,
is one of the main challenges for the visibility of 4D signal.
Figure 1: Brazilian Pre-salt field setting.
10.1190/image2022-3751640.1
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Second International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy
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DOI:10.1190/image2022-3751640.1