Acoustic and Elastodynamic Redatuming for VSP Salt Dome Flank Imaging
Abstract
We apply an extension of the concept of Time Reversed Acoustics (TRA) for imaging salt dome flanks using Vertical Seismic Profile (VSP) data. We demonstrate its performance and capabilities on both synthetic acoustic and elastic seismic data from a Gulf of Mexico (GOM) model. This target-oriented strategy eliminates the need for the traditional complex process of velocity estimation, model building, and iterative depth migration to remove the effects of the salt canopy and surrounding overburden. In this study, we use data from surface shots recorded in a well from a walkaway VSP survey. The method, called redatuming, creates a geometry as if the source and receiver pairs had been located in the borehole at the positions of the receivers. This process generates effective downhole shot gathers without any knowledge of the overburden velocity structure. The resulting shot gathers are less complex since the VSP ray paths from the surface source are shortened and moved to be as if they started in the borehole, then reflected off the salt flank region and captured in the borehole. After redatuming, we apply multiple passes of prestack migration from the reference datum of the borehole. In our example, the first pass migration, using only simple vertical velocity gradient model, reveals the outline of the salt edge. A second pass of reverse-time prestack depth migration using the full, two-way wave equation, is performed with an updated velocity model that now consists of the velocity gradient and the salt dome. The second pass migration brings out the dipping sediments abutting the salt flank because these reflectors were illuminated by energy that bounced off the salt flank forming prismatic reflections.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFM.S53D..07L
- Keywords:
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- 0520 Data analysis: algorithms and implementation;
- 0545 Modeling (4255);
- 7200 SEISMOLOGY;
- 7290 Computational seismology;
- 7299 General or miscellaneous