The lower and upper Paleocene reservoir
formations, the primary producing formations in the
northwest Sirte Basin, north-central Libya have complex
structures which have an impact on the performance of the
reservoirs. It is extremely crucial to understand the
complex relationships between the fault networks and
stratigraphy of the area for future field development.
However, delineating faults particularly subtle faults is not
an easy process due to the low signal-to-noise ratio in the
post stack seismic data despite the effort and careful
process of the pre-stack data. Seismic attributes are
critical tools in detecting and enhancing major and minor
fault interpretation beyond the seismic resolution of the
conventional seismic dataset. This study utilizes variance,
root mean square, and curvature attributes computed
from the post-stack 3D seismic data acquired in the
northwest Sirte Basin to detect major and minor faults
along an isolated carbonate platform. A spectral whitening
and median filter were applied to improve the quality of
the data and remove random noise resulted from data
acquisition and processing steps. Those methods were
utilized to provide high-resolution seismic data and better
show edges and structural features. Numerous faults have
been detected in the study area. Most major faults in the
lower and upper Paleocene reservoir formations are
located along the margins of the isolated carbonate
platform and have a NW-SE trend. Data conditioning and
seismic attribute analyses applied on the 3-D seismic
dataset effectively enhanced our understanding of the
reservoir complexity and improve the detection of the
major and minor faults and fracture zones in the study
area.
SEISMIC ATTRIBUTES AIDED DETECTION OF NW-SE TRENDING FAULTS DEVELOPED ON AN ISOLATED CARBONATE PLATFORM IN THE NW SIRTE BASIN, NORTH CENTRAL LIBYA
