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Integrating A Microtremor Survey and Time Reverse
Integrating A Microtremor Survey and Time Reverse
Abstract
A microtremor survey was carried out over a hydrocarbon reservoir in Majalengka field, West Java
Basin, Indonesia, using a three-channel broadband seismometer. The objectives of this survey
were to delineate the lateral distribution of the hydrocarbon potential and to localize microtremor
sources, which are associated with the hydrocarbon reservoir. The microtremor survey was
conducted by microtremor signal recording, which was divided into two types, namely
independent and simultaneous recording. Simultaneous recording is intended for conducting
two-dimensional time reverse modeling (2D TRM), which is proposed to localize microtremor
sources. In addition, a parameter test was performed to define a reference for the microtremor
responses in terms of amplitude spectrum anomalies of the vertical component, which is
associated with the reservoir content. The parameter test was performed on the 10 wellbores,
where seven productive wells showed amplitude spectrum anomalies with the increasing
amplitude spectrum reaching its peak in the frequency range of 2–3 Hz and then decreasing to a
frequency range of 3–4 Hz. Further, delineation of hydrocarbon potential distribution is based
on the vertical–horizontal spectral ratio (VHSR) map, which is used to distinguish the amplitude
spectrum anomalies stemming from the reservoir signal and horizontal noise. The VHSR map
showed that the eastern part of the study area was identified as a potential zone. In addition, by
referring to the TRM result, the depth location of the microtremor source, which is associated
with the hydrocarbon reservoir, was predicted to be in a depth range of 1062–1091 meters.
Keywords: microtremor survey, parameter test, time reverse modeling, Majalengka West Java,
Indonesia
ongoing to develop the field. One exploration activity in- vertical–horizontal ratio (V/H) to analyze the recorded mi-
volves microtremor surveys. crotremor signal, which is combined with the well informa-
Many developments of the microtremor amplitude spec- tion to support our interpretation. Following previous re-
trum were used for the application of soil properties charac- search (Walker 2008; Frehner et al. 2009; Lambert et al.
terization including soil resonant frequency, which is useful 2009a), the aims of this study were to delineate the lateral dis-
for defining site vulnerability, and microzonation to seismic tribution of the hydrocarbon potential and predict the depth
activities (Lermo & Chavez-Garcia 1993; Gitterman et al. of the reservoir by localizing the microtremor sources based
1996; Pamuk et al. 2017; Tuncel et al. 2017; Pamuk et al. on the microtremor spectrum anomalies.
2018). The other application of the microtremor amplitude
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
the petroleum system, the first two formations of the lower be used to identify the hydrocarbon indication (Goertz et al.
stratigraphic layer were considered as a source rock and reser- 2009; Lambert et al. 2009a,b; Ali et al. 2010). The VHSR is
voir, and the last formation of the upper stratigraphic layer expressed mathematically by Equation 1:
was interpreted as a trap layer.
Z( f)
The southern part of West Java is known as Southern VHSR ( f ) = (1)
Mountain; it consists of the Jampang formation. This zone is H ( f)
dominated by lithic volcanic breccia extending from west to where Z(f) is specrum of the vertical component and H(f)
east. This mountain is considered to have been generated by is the horizontal component spectrum consisting of a north–
the first magmatic activities that took place during the Oligo- south component and an east–west component. The result
Miocene related to the subduction process. for the horizontal component is expressed by Equation 2,
where NS(f) is the north–south component spectrum and
EW(f) is the east–west component spectrum:
2.2. Microtremor response of vertical to horizontal √
spectral ratio NS2 ( f ) + EW 2 ( f )
H ( f) = (2)
Low-frequency anomalies of microtremor response, which 2
are indicated by a frequency of less than 8 Hz, have recently Motivated by the previous literature, this paper analyzes
been used for oil and gas exploration. Some applications have the microtremor responses in terms of the amplitude spec-
been conducted to delineate the hydrocarbon reservoir in the trum of microtremor responses with respect to the hydro-
subsurface for the frontier and production field. Dangel et al. carbon reservoir in the West Java basin. Further, these mi-
(2003) conducted an experiment on the microtremor re- crotremor response anomalies are specifically intended for
sponse over a hydrocarbon production field and showed the delineating hydrocarbon reservoirs, as they are associated
correlation between low-frequency spectral anomalies and with the presence of hydrocarbons. The anomalies appear in
the hydrocarbon reservoir. Many publications have also re- the frequency range of 2–6 Hz, indicated by an increasing
ported the application of low-frequency anomaly analysis for spectrum amplitude.
direct hydrocarbon analysis. Most of these analyses are based On the other hand, direct analysis of amplitude spectrum
on the spectral ratio. is very risky due to the noise content of the recorded mi-
Lambert et al. (2007) suggest that hydrocarbon reservoirs crotremor signal. This risk is caused by noise such as human
are indicated by the dominant peak of the vertical to horizon- activities and wind with frequencies higher than 1 Hz. These
tal spectral ratio (VHSR), which is greater than one. This is frequencies overlap with the frequency of microtremor re-
because a reservoir containing hydrocarbons emits a specific sponses with respect to the hydrocarbon reservoir, even the
pressure wave that causes an increased vertical polarization natural movement of oceanic crust throughout the hemi-
of ambient noise on the surface (Ali et al. 2010). This finding sphere has a frequency range of 0.05–2 Hz (Saenger et al.
led to the hypothesis that a VHSR value greater than one can 2009). Therefore, to minimize this risk, we propose the use of
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
the VHSR to analyze the microtremor response that is asso- two schemes, namely independent and simultaneous record-
ciated with the hydrocarbon reservoir (Lambert et al. 2007). ing. Independent recording was applied to 148 recording
stations that recorded the data for 3 hours. To perform
the TRM, we acquired the simultaneous recordings of mi-
3. Data acquisition
crotremor response, which used six seismometer stations ar-
A microtremor survey, also known as passive seismic data ac- ranged in a line, with intervals of 1250 m between stations.
quisition, was successfully carried out in the Majalengka oil The six seismometers (STA-S1 to STA-S6) were operated si-
field. The acquisition was performed using six seismometers multaneously to record microtremor responses at the same
Guralp CMG-3ESP, which recorded ground velocity in the time.
period from June to July 2012. All seismometers recorded the Figure 2a shows the station array that was deployed in the
data with a sampling rate of 100 samples per second. Prior study area. The blue dots illustrate independent recording
to the data recording, a parameter test was carried out on and the red triangles indicate simultaneous recording. The
the surface of 10 wells to identify productive and dry wells. data recording was performed by placing the seismometer in
This parameter test was intended to define a reference for a hole with a depth of 50 cm and width of 40 cm. To reduce
the microtremor response correlated to the reservoir con- noise and create a proper coupling between the ground and
tent. seismometer, we placed ceramic padding in the base of the
The data acquisition was carried out over 148 stations, hole. An illustration of the seismometer deployment scheme
which were regularly distributed throughout the study area. is shown in figure 2b, and the real implementation in the field
In general, the data recording was carried out according to is shown in figure 2c.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
Figure 4. The microtremor response of the three components recorded over the RDG-38 well. The right panel illustrates (top) the well location, (mid-
dle) the spectrum of the three components and(bottom) the VHSR. The left panel presents the microtremor signal of (top) the vertical component,
(middle) easting-horizontal component and (bottom) northing-horizontal component.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
frequency of less than 0.5 Hz, was suspected to be back- erated by applying short-time Fourier transform to the mi-
ground noise. Three wells showed no microtremor response crotremor record for 30 minutes. The amplitude spectrum
anomalies; these were AGW-1, ABG-1 and RCI-1. calculation was carried out with a window length of 20 sec-
onds and time shift of 1 second. Four high-amplitudes were
observed at the times of 280, 300, 1050 and 1200 seconds, in-
4. Data processing dicating the presence of local transient noise. In addition, an-
The interpretation of microtremor response was applied to thropogenic noise was also observed at the times of 180 and
the noise-free data and was performed in the frequency do- 1440 seconds, emerging outside the frequency range of in-
main. Thus, data processing must be applied to the raw data terest of 0.2–6 Hz. This anthropogenic noise was suppressed
to make the microtremor response interpretable. The data by a bandpass filter. The frequency range of interest of 0.2–
processing included the following steps: (i) transforming mi- 6 Hz was hypothetically dominated by microseismic oceanic
crotremor data into a spectrogram to separate signal and wave (Cessaro 1994), whereas frequencies over 6 Hz were
noise, (ii) temporal normalization to reduce local transient dominated by anthropogenic noise (Bonnefoy-Claudet et al.
noise, (iii) filtering by applying a bandpass filter (1–6 Hz), 2006).
(iv) calculating the VHSR and, finally, (v) mapping the lateral
distribution of the VHSR. Recorded microtremor data from
4.1. Temporal normalization
148 stations were applied with the same processing schemes.
During the analysis of the microtremor response, a type of To eliminate local transient noise that is characterized by a
local transient noise was observed on the vertical component very strong amplitude compared to the surrounding ampli-
spectrogram, as shown in figure 6. The spectrogram was gen- tude, we applied the temporal normalization method adapted
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
from Lambert et al. (2011). The algorithm of temporal nor- 4.2. Bandpass filter
malization was applied by first applying the bandpass filter to In this study, we focused on the low-frequency range; thus,
the raw data, which is shown in figure 7a. Figure 7b shows we applied a lower cut-off (LF) of 1 Hz and a high cut-off
the microtremor signal that was filtered by the bandpass (HF) of 6 Hz. This frequency range (1–6 Hz) was applied to
filter. Further, the absolute amplitude of filtered amplitude eliminate low and high signals of less than 1 Hz and greater
(figure 7b) was then averaged for each window length of 20 than 6 Hz. A very low signal is commonly caused by ocean
seconds with a time shift of 1 second. Figure 7c shows the waves and the tidal action of the earth (Cessaro 1994). A high
averaged absolute amplitude that presented local transient signal that is greater than 6 Hz is normally produced by daily
noise by a strong amplitude at a given time. activities, wind and traffic (Bonnefoy-Claudet et al. 2006).
This averaged absolute amplitude significantly controlled This signal may interfere with or cause ambiguity in the mi-
the determination of the amplitude threshold, which was crotremor signal from the hydrocarbon reservoir.
then used to normalize the local transient noise. In the Figure 8 shows the processed microtremor response of
next step, we eliminated the strong amplitude of local tran- the three components recorded at STA-88. The right panel
sient noise by applying a normalization operator. Figure 7d of figure 8 illustrates the well location (top), the spectrum
presents a microtremor amplitude that was free from lo- of the three components (middle) and the VHSR (bot-
cal transient noise after temporal normalization. The mi- tom). The left panel of figure 8 presents the microtremor
crotremor spectrum free from local transient noise is shown signal of the vertical component (top), easting-horizontal
in figure 7e.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
Figure 13. Snapshot of wave propagation as a function of time for a time lapse of (upper left) 0.05 of a second, (upper right) 0.25 second, (lower left)
0.5 second and (lower right) 1 second.
each other (upper right part of figure 16). Finally, in the time iment on the synthetic dataset showed that the TRM algo-
lapse of 3.02 seconds, we found the superposition of the max- rithm can predict the origin of the microtremor source and
imum particle velocity (lower right part of figure 16), which was confirmed to be accurate for the artificial microtremor
was associated with the microtremor source. source location.
The experimental sequence was carried out successfully,
including the generation of synthetic data from the geological 5.2.2. Real data. Having validated the TRM algorithm, we
model, time reversal of the synthetic seismogram and TRM applied the algorithm to the real dataset. The real dataset was
to estimate the origin of the microtremor source. The exper- acquired by simultaneous recording, which was carried out
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
in the survey line over the potential hydrocarbon reservoir. TRM for the last three seismometers (STA-S4 to STA-S6) is
In this case, the simultaneous recording was divided into two shown in figure 20. In general, these two velocities were simi-
sessions by applying three seismometers sequentially; thus, lar in terms of the velocity contrast, but there was a slight dif-
TRM was performed by considering the first three recorded ference in the layer strata. The TRM algorithm depends on
seismograms (STA-S1 to STA-S3) and continued with the these two velocity models. In the next step, the velocity mod-
last three recorded seismograms (STA-S4 to STA-S6). els were used to propagate the recorded seismogram from the
The upper part of figure 17 illustrates the seismograms surface into the subsurface covering the velocity model.
recorded by the first three seismometers, indicated by red Our experiment on the real dataset was performed suc-
(STA-S1), green (STA-S2) and blue (STA-S3). In addition, cessfully, including the prediction of the microtremor source
the reversed-time seismogram is shown in the lower part of as indicated by the superposition of the maximum particle
figure 15. The displayed seismogram is the selected record for velocity. Figure 21 shows a snapshot of TRM for a time lapse
a time window of 100 seconds. The last three seismometers, of 3.35 seconds from the simultaneous propagation from the
indicated by red (STA-S4), green (STA-S5) and blue (STA- first three seismometers (STA-S1 to STA-S3). The maximum
S6), are shown in the upper part of figure 18. The reversed- particle velocity, which is associated with the microtremor
time seismogram is shown in the lower part of figure 18. The source, was identified at a distance of 5500 m and depth
seismogram was also selected for time windows of 100 sec- of 1.048 seconds two-way time (TWT) (or 1062 m) under
onds. STA-S3. The snapshot of TRM from the simultaneous prop-
The crucial component in applying TRM is the accuracy agation from the last three seismometers (STA-S4 to STA-
of the velocity model. In this case, we used the velocity that S6) for a time lapse of 9.07 seconds is shown in figure 22. The
was extracted from seismic data. The velocity model used for predicted microtremor source is indicated by the maximum
TRM for the first three seismometers (STA-S1 to STA-S3) is particle velocity, found at a distance of 6500 m and depth of
shown in figure 19. In addition, the velocity model used for 1.076 seconds TWT (or 1091 m) under STA-S4.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
Figure 17. Recorded seismograms from (top) the first three seismometers, indicated by red (STA-S1), green (STA-S2) and blue (STA-S3), and (bot-
tom) the pair of reversed-time seismograms.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
Figure 19. Velocity model used to perform TRM for the first three seis-
Figure 21. Snapshot of TRM from the simultaneous propagation for the
mometers (STA-S1 to STA-S3).
first three seismometers (STA-S1 to STA-S3).
Figure 20. Velocity model used to perform TRM for the last three seis-
mometers (STA-S4 to STA-S6).
Figure 22. Snapshot of TRM from the simultaneous propagation for the
last three seismometers (STA-S4 to STA-S6).
eastern part of the study area. In contrast, the western part of
the study area has less of a potential hydrocarbon indication.
In addition, by referring to the TRM analysis, we identified
that the depth of the microtremor source, which is associated
Acknowledgements
with the depth of hydrocarbon indication, is in the range of
1062–1091 m under the simultaneous recording stations of We thank PT Pertamina EP for supporting this research and giving
STA-S3 and STA-S4. permission for publication.
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Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (2019) 0, 1–14 Haris et al.
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