SC-05: Converted Waves for Land and OBN Data: Prestack Imaging and Joint Inversion

Geophysicists with a basic understanding of shear waves and a knowledge of seismic exploration/production applications, who want to leverage the added value of elastic properties from recorded PS-wave data over what is obtained from P-wave data alone.

PS-wave reflections are routinely acquired on land and the seabed to obtain elastic, shear wavefields, but are rarely utilized. The goal of this two-day course is to bring PS-waves into the main stream of reservoir exploration and production. This course distinguishes the fundamental properties of PS-waves from P-waves: polarization (S-wave splitting), illumination, amplitude, and velocity anisotropy. The course includes the basics of PS-wave acquisition and processing, and the challenges of velocity model building and prestack migration. Many examples show benefits of combining PS-waves with P-waves for joint AVO inversion, and demonstrate applications for reservoir rock properties: facies, lithology, fracture identification, pressure prediction, and production monitoring.

Define the processing and inversion challenges of PS-wave 3C seismic data for land and OBS applications:
1. construct travel paths for illumination and imaging,
2. model AVO/A responses for joint inversion with P-waves,
3. interpret PS-waves with P-waves for Vp/Vs profiles, and
4. classify petrophysical applications for interpretation.

This course covers the background and fundamentals of elastic properties and the full range of applications from acquisition, processing, and illumination to prestack migration, inversion, and interpretation.