During this time seismic interpreters were making use of dip and azimuth maps, amplitude extractions and seismic sequence attribute mapping concepts were also established. The 1990s saw 3D attribute extractions become commonplace in the interpretation work place. Finally, a reasonable expectation is enunciated in that seismic attributes will continue to improve accuracy of interpretations and predictions in hydrocarbon exploration and development. We pick up the threads of this development over the last five to six years that has lead to the present seismic attribute analysis tools and workflows and also discuss some applications of seismic attributes that demonstrate the direction in which the attribute development is headed. The proliferation of seismic attributes in the last two decades has led to attempts to their classification and to bring some order to their chaotic development. A detailed reconstruction of these key historical events that lead to the modern seismic attribute analysis may be found in Chopra and Marfurt (2005). Of course all this was possible with the power of scientific computing making significant advances during the same period of time. These developments continued into the new millennium, with enhanced visualization and 3D computation and interpretation of texture and curvature attributes coming to the forefront. These included pattern recognition techniques as well as neural network applications. This was followed by the introduction of spectral decomposition in the late 1990s and a host of methods for evaluation of a combination of attributes. The coherence technology introduced in the mid 1990s significantly changed the way geophysicists interpreted seismic data. 3D seismic acquisition dominated the 1990s as the most successful exploration technology of several decades and along with that came the seismic sequence attributes. This was followed by the development of response attributes, introduction of texture analysis, 2D attributes, horizon and interval attributes and the pervasive use of color. Beginning with the digital recording of seismic data in the early 1960s and the ensuing bright spot analysis, the 1970s saw the introduction of complex trace attributes and seismic inversion along with their color displays. Today, they are being used widely for lithological and petrophysical prediction of reservoirs and various methodologies have been developed for their application to broader hydrocarbon exploration and development decision making. Seismic attributes have come a long way since their introduction in the early 1970s and have become an integral part of seismic interpretation projects.
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