A Publication of PGS Geophysical Vol. 2 No.

2 REPRINT March 2002

The ‘D’s in 4D Seismic from PGS Dense Aqcuisition

Over view
Part 2: Dense Acquisition & Distinguished Processing
PGS has introduced HD3D
technology for onshore, seafloor
PGS has recently devoted The Advantages of Dense and streamer surveys. This
significant resources to the HD3DTM for 4D Seismic technology is well suited for 4D
improvement of 4D technology. A
seismic in all these environments
strong effort has been made to establish When we design a seismic survey,
because:
a thorough, consistent product we would ideally like to have:
• Dense acquisition gives
including leading technology and tools • Dense sampling to avoid aliasing and
adequate sampling of the
as well as the right expertise. PGS has get optimum resolution.
wavefield, higher resolution and
defined four Ds that characterize our
• High fold to decrease random noise better velocity analyses.
products and strengths with respect to a
and get clear data.
4D project: • Dense acquisition gives higher
• Detailed planning • Multiple azimuths to improve fold, reduced random noise and

• Dense acquisition imaging and map and control increased repeatability.

anisotropy.
• Distinguished processing • Dense acquisition may also give
• Dedicated QC • Efficient acquisition to reduce costs. better azimuthal coverage,
which enables better matching
This newsletter focuses on Dense Dense sampling implies the of two surveys due to:
Acquisition and Distinguished sampling interval (in space and time) is - Flexibility in selection of
Processing. so small that aliasing is avoided in all input gathers of monitor
surveys.
- Opportunity to remove
multidirectional noise.
- Better imaging.

The efficient, dense

acquisition facilitated by HD3D
makes this a very appropriate
technology for acquisition of 4D
data.

relevant processing domains. It also

means we get a sufficient number of
samples or traces within each bin.
Proper sampling and proper sub-surface
coverage is the best way to avoid
harming the data during processing.

Figure 1: Comparison of conventional 3D survey with 166400 traces per km2 (lower part) and
Continued on next page
HD3D survey with 576000 traces per km2 (upper part) - Courtesy BP.
TechLink March 2002 Page 2

The Advantages of Dense configurations and we

HD3DTM for 4D Seismic consequently have to
Continued from Page 1 compare two surveys
PGS has introduced HD3D with varying source-
technology for onshore, seafloor and receiver azimuths and
streamer surveys. Bin sizes in the range different sampling. For
of 10m x 10m can be efficiently streamer surveys, the
acquired using this technology. efficiency and
flexibility of HD3D
An example of improvement in makes it feasible to
data quality achieved by HD3D acquire swaths that are
streamer seismic is shown in Figure 1. overlapping, which
again makes available a
HD3D technology enables the larger range of azimuths
small bins/high resolution and high for all source - receiver
fold/high S/N we need for detailed configurations.
reservoir studies. The higher trace
density resulting from HD3D will allow If we are acquiring
Figure 3: (a) Comparison of AVO response for Radon
for improved repeatability because a monitor survey, demultiple using an aliased and an un-aliased Radon
transform. (b) Improvement in amplitude using the well-
processing artifacts originating in HD3D technology will
parameterised high-resolution transform. The solid line
transforms or data interpolation are normally give more hits indicates the true AVO trend of a primary event. The long-
dashed line shows the AVO response of the event after
reduced. The dense acquisition per bin than the base
standard (least-squares) Radon demultiple. The short-
improves the velocity analyses which line survey. The surplus dashed line shows the AVO response after demultiple using a
high-resolution Radon transform.
normally have a strong impact on data of data makes it
quality. HD3D surveys are therefore possible to achieve a
ideal for base line purposes for a 4D better match between the data that are directional noise suppression when a
project. used in each bin from the monitor and wider range of azimuths have been
base line surveys respectively. Hence, a acquired.
We frequently face the problem monitor survey acquired with HD3D
allows us to pick the traces that have Distinguished Processing
that the monitor and baseline surveys
optimum match to the base survey's High-quality 4D processing
do not have the same survey
offset and azimuth. In requires an integrated processing

addition, the level of sequence that is specifically focused on

non-repeatable noise both structural fidelity and primary

will be reduced through amplitude preservation. The 4D

use of directional noise friendly processing flow must be highly

suppression. Many repeatable between base and monitor

noise suppression surveys. Among the many vital

processes suffer components of a 4D friendly processing

because the data are flow are pre-stack full or partial

sampled only in one migration, coherent and incoherent

direction. noise removal, and consistent

amplitude recovery. As is clear from the

Again, HD3D can processing flow in Figure 2, it is crucial

Figure 2: QC of the processing flow. allow superior to do QC after each step!
Page 3
4D Optimized
Amplitude Recovery
It is important to recover the
amplitudes from the data in a consistent
and accurate manner to obtain a good
4D signal. Three of the most important
considerations in this process are: (i)
source/receiver directivity, (ii)
geometrical spreading and (iii) the
effects of Q. The source and receiver
arrays used in typical marine surveys
produce responses that depend on the
emission/emergence and azimuth
angles of each source-reflector-receiver
ray-path. These effects are time and
offset dependent for a given source-
streamer combination and should be
corrected for at an early stage in the
processing sequence.
Absorption results in a progressive
loss of high frequency signal as a
function of travel-time. Dispersion
results in progressive wavelet delay as a
function of travel-time. The main effect
is that the imbedded wavelet becomes
non-stationary and this, in turn, distorts
the true amplitude (and thus true 4D)
effect. A robust approach is to apply
scalars (that are functions of Q, time,
velocity and offset) to try and recover
peak amplitude. Computation of these
scalars is based on dominant frequency
and bandwidth of the data at various
travel-times.
Multiple Removal
In general, removing coherent
noise and multiple energy from the
seismic dataset is one of the most vital
processing steps. Of the many
demultiple techniques available, two
stand out as being generally good at
preserving pre-stack primary
amplitudes. Surface related multiple
A Publication of PGS Geophysical
elimination (SRME, Figure 4) shows Distinguished
very good primary amplitude Processing Over view
preservation as long as care is taken
PGS has developed a series of
during the design of the adaptive
algorithms specially suited for 4D
subtraction component of the process.
processing:
However, the most commonly used
• Consistent amplitude recovery
demultiple algorithm, in cases where
compensating for
pre-stack primary amplitude
source/receiver directivity,
preservation is critical, is Radon
geometrical spreading, and
demultiple.
absorption.
When Radon demultiple is used, it • High-fidelity DMO.
is vital that the Radon transform not
• Multiple removal by SRME or
generates alsiasing. Figure 3(a) shows a
Radon demultiple using high-
comparison of AVO behaviour for a
resolution transforms.
synthetic event after Radon demultiple
with both an aliased and unaliased • Pre-stack full or partial
Radon transform. migration using true-amplitude
pre-stack time migration that
The unaliased Radon transform takes into account velocity
improves the amplitude preservation at variations as a function of
both far, and in particular, near offsets depth.
(Figure 3(b)). Hence, a well-
parameterised high-resolution As a result, PGS has a total
transform is necessary for 4D processing flow that comprises 4D
processing. friendly-processing.
Continued on next page
Figure 4: Seismic section before (left) and after application of SRME (right).
TechLink March 2002 Page 4

Figure 5: DMO gather: Left panel - conventional DMO is applied. Right panel - HiFi DMO is applied to the maximum offset 1200 m. In
particular, compare the amplitudes on the nearest offset traces (arrowed).

Pre-Stack Imaging - High Fidelity DMO and TA-PSTM

Although pre-stack depth/time The main objective of such a
migration is rapidly becoming a processing sequence is to obtain an
conventional tool, it is noticeable that optimal migration velocity field that
DMO still retains a useful role as a can also be used to develop a model for
preprocessing step rather than as a pre-stack depth migration or a full time-
partial imaging step. DMO is often a migration before stack. It is obvious
critical step to regularize the input data that any DMO implementation used in
set to different offset planes. such a processing sequence must be
able to preserve amplitudes at all
offsets.
C O N TA C T
PGS has implemented a HiFi DMO
PGS Geophysical that makes an efficient practical
application of near offset amplitude-
London
Tel: 44-1932-260001 preserved processing possible. Figure 5
Fax: 44-1932-266465 shows two CMP DMO gathers of real
Oslo marine seismic data with 16 streamers
Tel: 47-67-52-6400 before and after the application of HiFi
Fax: 47-67-52-6464
DMO. A significant improvement of
Houston DMO on near offsets has been
Tel: 1-281-509-8000
Fax: 1-281-509-8500 achieved.
For a full imaging solution, true-
amplitude pre-stack time migration
(TA-PSTM) is available. The
conventional 3D Kirchhoff pre-stack
time migration (KPSTM) assumes
straight raypaths and constant velocity
media for the traveltime calculations.
TA-PSTM uses an amplitude
preserving KPSTM algorithm suitable
for a media where velocity can vary as
a function of depth.
The migration results for model
and raw data demonstrate that this
curved ray migration technique
produces better images and migration
velocities than those obtained using the
straight ray KPSTM. Moreover, the
amplitude preservation makes it ideal
for use in 4D and AVO processing.

Singapore
Tel: 65-6735-6411
Fax: 65-6735-6413 For Updates on PGS Technological Advances, visit www.pgs.com
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