Coalbed methane:
a 3-D reservoir seismic data set

David E. Lumley

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ABSTRACT

Coalbed methane reservoirs are becoming an increasingly interesting prospect to some major oil and gas companies. The rapid spatial heterogeneity of coal physical properties, methane saturation levels, and coal fracture systems and flowpaths makes these targets a challenging prospect for reservoir characterization research in general, and 3-D prestack seismic impedance inversion in particular. I briefly present some examples of a comprehensive 3-D land seismic data set made available to SEP by Amoco Research, and point out some interesting features, problems and prospects in the data with respect to my inversion goals. The data are characterized by a strong AVO response on the coalbed target at 0.5 seconds, and a weaker basement reflection at 1.3 seconds. The swaths are contaminated by spatially aliased air-wave noise, ground roll, and trapped surface modes, and contain apparent source-receiver amplitude and residual statics variations.