Sharp Reflections announce expansion of its 4D capabilities with PreStack Pro 6.2

The software update is set to dramatically improve interpretation efficiency and increase oil recovery from large fields. By accelerating the identification and mapping of production-induced seismic changes, the new 4D features will enable operators to find oil in bypassed or poorly-drained sections of their reservoirs.

• Interpreters need no-longer manually compute the differences between vintages on each stack
• Pre-stack ‘gathers’ can now be used to store collections of stacks from different seismic vintages
• With everything in a single volume, interpreters can see the differences between stacks without ever having to calculate them, vastly improving efficiency in interpretation activities

Stavanger, 5 May 2021 – Sharp Reflections, a trailblazer in big data solutions for quantitative seismic data analysis, has announced a software update to its industry leading proprietary software, PreStack Pro. The 6.2 update, developed in partnership with Equinor focuses on expanding the software’s capabilities within the 4D domain. Whilst this offers additional functionality for improving pre-stack seismic analysis, its main benefits can be found in production-based seismic interpretation.

Launched in early 2020, the project with Equinor was aimed at developing PreStack Pro’s 4D processing and analysis functionalities. This latest release compliments the earlier November 2020 release and completes the development, establishing an interactive framework for the efficient handling of time-lapse seismic data.

With 4D seismic playing an increasingly important role in ongoing reservoir management, these latest updates to the PreStack Pro software offer operators a seamless platform from which to analyse the changes in seismic vintages over time and ultimately to optimise their field developments. With all volumes now organised into a single multi-vintage object, 4D visualisation, post-processing and amplitude analysis are all streamlined.

New 4D features

PreStack Pro 6.2 introduces Vintage as a new data-type, used to organize pre-stack angle stacks or gathers into a single multi-dimensional volume with angle/offset and vintage as gather axes. All processing and data analysis algorithms automatically loop over all vintages, allowing users to execute multi-vintage workflows in one simple step.

New Difference-in-Viewer functionality has been introduced to interactively calculate the difference between any two time-lapse surveys in both section and map view. Users set one vintage as a baseline, and automatically display differences between any other monitor volume. This new capability dramatically improves overall efficiency and data organization by eliminating the need to calculate and manage difference volumes. Difference-in-Viewer functionality is not restricted to 4D applications, and can be used to compare different processing flows, or to quickly display amplitude changes with offset or angle.

Match filtering has been improved with a robust Global Filter Matching, to estimate and apply one filter to match two seismic volumes. This complements the Trace-by-Trace Matching algorithm released in PreStack Pro 6.0. Filters can be specified as output, manipulated using other PreStack Pro algorithms, and then re-applied to the seismic volume.

Several existing algorithms have also undergone major improvements. RMO/NMO now supports vintage or azimuthally varying velocity and Eta-fields. Align2 now includes new modes for aligning time-lapse data. EPS3D and ECED3D allowing auxiliary dip-volumes as input to better control dip-steered noise removal across vintages.

Other improvements
Users can now interactively pick seed points and display auto tracked horizons by linking the 3D Viewer with Horizon Tools. Other key improvements which enhance overall usability are described in detail in the release notes.

Bill Shea, CEO of Sharp Reflections heralded the update as the next step in the evolution of PreStack Pro’s software capabilities. He said:

“I am delighted to finally announce the PreStack Pro 6.2 update, which is the result of extensive work between Sharp Reflections and Equinor.

“The benefits of this new 4D capability are extensive. With pre-stack gathers now available in a single volume, data organisation is vastly improved, leading to accelerated insights and improved context. For the first time, our users can quickly see where the changes are happening and analyse these in more detail without the need for manual calculations or comparisons.

“With the release of this software update, we continue to increase the capabilities of PreStack Pro, helping operators to make more informed and optimised business decisions.”