Direct Gas Detection Using Wavelet Energy Absorption

Summary Energy attenuation analysis is relatively new and one of the most promising methods for the direct hydrocarbon detection from the seismic data. From wave propagation phenomenon it follows that only the instantaneous wavelet, not the reflection coefficients, bares the attenuation properties of the earth. Thus we call the discussed method the Wavelet Energy Analysis (WEA). The temporal resolution of the WEA technique is at the maximum allowed by sampling theorem and hence, is limited to the half of the instantaneous wavelength. The WEA technique has been used in numerous commercial applications and has produced results. In this paper we illustrate the application of WEA to a 3D onshore dataset from Western China.