| Abstract: | The analysis of prestack reflections may have a high diagnostic potential in the evaluation of the petrophysical characteristics of subsurface targets. However, the recovery of reliable seismic responses, especially when examining amplitude versus offset (AVO) variations, is of the utmost importance and is strictly dependent on the acquisition and processing steps. In order to evaluate the impact of different processing sequences, we examine the AVO responses of three seismic events from a marine data set. Borehole data indicate that these events are related to a lignitic sand, a gas sand and a cineritic bed. The AVO analysis is focused mainly on the reflections from the gas sand. In particular, we compare the results of a standard processing sequence with results from a surface-consistent approach and with results from a processing sequence tailored to this specific case. A decreasing AVO trend of the gas-sand reflection results from the analyses of data that have undergone the standard and the surface-consistent processing sequences. This contrasts with both theory and borehole information, which both predict an energy increase with offset. A detailed study shows that the receiver array attenuation, neglected in previous Studies, plays a major role in attenuating the far-offset reflections. Other propagation factors, such as offset-dependent geometrical spreading and Q absorption, produce only minor effects. Taking into account the above factors, we apply a third processing sequence whose impact on the AVO trend is evaluated step by step and whose results are compared with the previously applied sequences. This new sequence leads to better agreement between the AVOs predicted from borehole data and those measured on surface seismic data. |
