Seismic Chronostratigraphy: Prospects In Petroleum Exploration

Seismic survey has long become a trusted tool for hydrocarbon exploration. This is because of the

outstanding ability of seismic reflections and their over lapping relationships to image deep and shallow subsurface structures and delineate promising structural and stratigraphic traps. These subsurface features become good prospecting targets, maybe because of their depositional history or post depositional

events. With this in mind, it is necessary to draw out relationships between depositional sequence and time of deposition of rocks within a geologic region.

This led to the development of a broad subfield known as Chronostratigraphy.

Recently, researchers made an outstanding discovery that seismic reflections correspond mostly to depositional surfaces. The implication of this was that we can now assign geologic ages to seismic surfaces; as such, convert a seismic section to a chronostratigraphic section and at large – strongly link seismology with chronostratigraphy. We now have a new rapidly emerging discipline that is called “Seismic Stratigraphy”.