Abstract: Method for analysis of hydrocarbon potential of subterranean regions by generating surfaces or geobodies and analyzing them for hydrocarbon indications. Reflection-based surfaces may be automatically created in a topologically consistent manner where individual surfaces do not overlap themselves and sets of multiple surfaces are consistent with stratigraphic superposition principles. Initial surfaces are picked from the seismic data (41), then broken into smaller parts (“patches”) that are predominantly topologically consistent (42), whereupon neighboring patches are merged in a topologically consistent way (43) to form a set of surfaces that are extensive and consistent (“skeleton”). Surfaces or geobodies thus extracted may be automatically analyzed and rated (214) based on a selected measure (213) such as one or more direct hydrocarbon indications (“DHI”), e.g. AVO classification.