Phillips Petroleum Co (PPCO)’s John Grismore revealed impressive new technology for automating the process of fault plane detection in a paper presented at the Calgary SEG. The Fault Plane Cube (FPCube) is described as a "highly automated and interactive fault interpretation process."
Credible
The software differs from other continuity based tools in that it searches specifically for non-vertical planar discontinuities. PDM attended the talk and was impressed by the credible positioning of faults in moderately complex terrains. Equally impressive was the man-machine interaction allowing for interpreter selection and alignment of auto-picked fault segments and export of finished work to vendor databases.
Patented
PPCO’s Fault Plane Cube (FPCube) uses a compute-intensive patented algorithm which involves calculating a proprietary "RB Factor". For each sample in the data, a correlation process determines the degree of planarity in the near vicinity of the sample by comparing local waveform shape and amplitude along small, offset planes at various dip azimuth combinations. After thresholding, the RB values are incorporated into the FPCube.
Grismore
Grismore told PDM "FPCube is the fruit of a four year internal research program within Phillips. FPCube is a mature product and has had plenty of ‘front line’ use. We have been talking to a number of software vendors regarding possible commercialization of the tool. It can also be hooked into Phillips’ own interpretation environment - the Seismitarium - where FP cube data is used in demonstrations."
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