Castagna, John P.2021-09-222021-09-22May 20212021-05May 2021https://hdl.handle.net/10657/8274Compaction effects can obscure the impedance separation between hydrocarbon-bearing and fully brine-saturated sandstones. Discrimination can be improved by removing depth-related trends from inverted seismic impedance. Although the ratio of compressional-to-shear wave velocity versus seismic compressional-wave impedance cross plots show differences between pay, brine sand, and shale trends, using absolute inverted impedances only imperfectly distinguishes hydrocarbon sands from brine sands due to outliers. In a given locality, statistical comparison of well log and seismic-derived impedances enables a shale impedance model to be obtained and used as a lithology baseline to de-trend the impedance from the effects of burial and overburden. This has the effect of unmasking anomalies associated with hydrocarbon-bearing sands and serves as a reliable fluid discriminator. For an offshore Gulf of Mexico dataset on the flank of a salt dome, with pay occurring over a wide range of depths, we find that hydrocarbon-bearing sands are identified with a greater success rate after de-trending the absolute seismic impedance.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Impedance, Fluid, Salt Dome2021-09-22Thesisborn digital