Depth on Demand – Fast Beam migration, Smart Flood™, and Integrated Visualization for Improved Velocity Depth Model Building

Kevin Sherwood¹, Jostein Lima, Tim Bird, and Peter Wijnen
¹AGS, Petroleum GeoServices, Houston, TX

Our industry is facing ever-shorter time frames to address a problem of increased complexity: maturing a prospect from initial access-level exploration into a de-risked mature prospect ready for well planning and drilling. Some of the challenges in this process come from handling large regional-scale high quality seismic data sets that are now available, to managing the computer time needed to make high-fidelity images of the subsurface. Model building typically relies on human interaction and can be a bottleneck in this process, involving multiple software platforms and time-consuming data logistics.

Here, we will present a set of tools that we find are very well suited to address this challenge. Through our beam migration approach, we are able to efficiently and accurately image large datasets very rapidly and accurately image with a large migration aperture and with a full dip-range. The beam migration process is separated into two main components: a dipscan process that is performed once for the whole survey and which output is then stored on disk for later use, second a fast migration step is carried out ‘on-demand' or through multiple model iterations. With modern computer hardware this imaging step can be performed in almost real-time. We will also present beam-based imaging techniques that allow for improved salt interpretation in complex regions through the use of a unique Smart Flood™ process.

By integrating these capabilities with a 3D visualization system that can handle the full range of scales from basin-size seismic to detailed interpretation and model building, we are shortening the cycle time and greatly reducing the data-logistical overhead. The data can reside in this system from the early mega-regional stages through to prospect-specific model building and imaging projects where also other imaging algorithms such as one-way wavefield extrapolation migration and reverse-time migration can be applied.

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90085 © 2008 GCAGS 58th Annual Meeting, Houston, Texas