Implementing New Technology to Revitalize Central North Sea Seismic Via Evolutionary Processing

Abstract

Summary The Central North Sea is a mature basin containing a large number of fields, some of which have been in production for decades. Advances in seismic acquisition and data processing over the life of these fields have brought about improvements in seismic image quality and therefore the understanding of the reservoirs. Here we apply some of the latest processing and imaging techniques in a challenging geological setting to help overcome some prevalent subsurface issues and identify opportunities to add significant potential reserves. These include improving the bandwidth of the data, the multiple attenuation and addressing the imaging problems introduced by shallow channels and gas. The processing sequence was established via an evolution style workflow, whereby fully imaged seismic volumes were created at stages during the life of the project. These products provide the opportunity for end user feedback, based upon detailed, reservoir focussed QC.