Prediction of spatial patterns of saturation time-lapse from time-lapse seismic

The advent of 4D time-lapse seismic surveys opens a new dimension to reservoir development: the possibility of monitoring from seismic data fluid flow hence production. Because of the low resolution of seismic data, one should not expect any useful point-to-point correlation between time-lapse saturation and seismic data; instead one might expect correlation of spatial patterns of these 2 variables. Spatial patterns involve multiple-locations within a fixed template window, and are summarized by the principal/canonical components of the within-template variability of each variable.