A review on time-lapse seismic data processing and interpretation

Time-lapse (TL) seismic or 4D seismic has great potential in monitoring and interpreting time-varying variations in reservoir fluid properties during hydrocarbon production. The TL surveys interpret dynamic changes in reservoir parameters by detecting differences in seismic responses from different vintages, which are obtained by repeated seismic surveys over the same area. For a proper and more precise quantitative interpretation of the TL seismic responses, TL seismic processing enhances repeatability of the TL-data sets, and thus reduces artificial differences that come from unavoidable differences in repeated-seismic-survey environments. This study aims to bring an insight to the state of the art in both TL seismic data processing and interpretation by reviewing previously-published researches. TL data processing is a sequential process conducting 4D binning and simultaneous 4D pre-stack processing; 4D binning improves spatial repeatability while "simultaneous 4D pre-stack processing" derives common processing operators employing cross-equalization (XEQ) as a core technique. TL seismic interpretation is categorized by the characteristics of data being interpreted into two strategies: interpretation of data sets from all TL vintages and interpretation of differences in seismic data between vintages.