Seyyed Hossein Hashemi - Exploration Directorate (NIOC),

Fault detection can be performed at any scale. During the exploration phase, the focus may be to look for major tectonic fault systems spanning the basin and identify their influence on any prospects. Alternatively with known reservoirs, at appraisal, development or production phase, a similar approach can be applied, but at a local scale. A this scale you are looking at faults and fault systems that may be the result of tectonic forces from completely different directions which have affect on ultimate hydrocarbon recovery.The main objective of this paper is to present an efficient workflow that generates fault surfaces with the help of interpreters so maybe it is a good idea to name it as Semi-Automatic workflow. The first step of workflow is to generate a fault attribute that enhances the discontinuities in the seismic data. Fault-like surfaces are then extracted using an algorithm called ant tracking. The surfaces can be manipulated and filtered manually by interpreters. This workflow has been applied to one of Iranian offshore reservoir and the resulting ant-tracking cube and precisely extracted fault surfaces will be illustrated.