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GCBenefits of Reduced Bin Size*
Satinder Chopra1 and Kurt J. Marfurt2
Search and Discovery Article #41238 (2013)
Posted November 11, 2013
*Adapted from the Geophysical Corner column, prepared by the authors, in AAPG Explorer,
October, 2013, and entitled “Let’s Get Small: Benefits of Reduced Bin Size”.
Editor of Geophysical Corner is Satinder Chopra ([email protected]). Managing Editor of AAPG Explorer is Vern Stefanic
1Arcis Corp., Calgary, Canada ([email protected])
2University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
Ideally, seismic
data
should be acquired at high spatial and temporal sampling, so that the small subsurface features of interest can be clearly seen on the
seismic
display. Such
interpretation
is easiest when the geological features of interest are uniformly illuminated, which in turn is possible by recording the scattered
seismic
wavefield on a uniform surface grid. The “nominal grid” is defined by the source-to-source spacing within a shot line and the geophone-group-to-geophone-group spacing within a receiver line.
One also can increase the trace density by reducing the spacing between shot lines and between receiver lines. Once acquired, data
processing workflows are designed to retain the highest possible lateral and vertical resolution of the geologic target. Because of the different ray paths, dense acquisition (closer source and receiver lines) provides greater leverage against backscattered ground roll and interbed multiples, as well as decreased migration artifacts. Uniform acquisition results in increased lateral continuity of amplitudes that otherwise may be contaminated by acquisition footprint.
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In reality, economic, permitting and physical access constraints result in 3-D
Such non-uniformity in offsets and azimuths introduce additional artifacts in the final image. This non-uniformity also affects the performance of the processing algorithms – and so could lead to sub-optimally processed
In principal, any processing algorithm can be modified to handle sparse
While there is no substitute for acquiring good quality
Regularization of
After doing the trace edits, amplitude recovery, refraction statics, preliminary velocity analysis and trim statics, one can run 5-D interpolation to “regularize” the In this article we demonstrate the results of reducing the bin size of the
However, there is nothing preventing us in postulating a denser 10-meter by 10-meter grid and interpolating the corresponding unmigrated surface
The results we show are from a land
In Figure 1 we show a comparison of coherence horizon slices generated from
A comparison of the Although the distributary channel system seen on the coherence slices is well imaged at the nominal grid size, the interpolated surface We thank Arcis |