This paper describes the framework for constructing a realistic deep water Gulf of Mexico geologic model, marine acquisition simulation using full offset wave equation, application of various depth migration tests using the known model, and comparison of the model data results to real data results. The main focus of our project was to construct a realistic geological model, to simulate seismic acquisition using typical marine acquisition geometry and parameters and to image the data using prestack depth migration algorithms that are used in routine production processing. The project results are a series of prestack depth migrated volumes generated using various Kirchhoff and wave equation algorithms. These volumes serve as an interpretation guide and aid our understanding of complex salt bodies and subsalt structures in real deep water Gulf of Mexico datasets.
The Tempest 3D model and dataset were generated to test industry's ability to correctly image deep water Gulf of Mexico subsalt structures. The project included four steps: (a) design of a 3-dimensional model based on real Gulf of Mexico geology; (b) acquisition design that included narrow azimuth, mid (range) azimuth and wide azimuth geometries; (c) numerical simulation using twoway wave equation algorithm and construction of three synthetic datasets; (d) application of various prestack depth migration algorithms for testing of subsalt imaging quality. The project parameters acquisition design and prestack depth migration algorithm parameters were all selected based on a single guideline: to be done as close as possible to field data acquisition and imaging. By following this guideline we obtained a dataset which realistically represents our ability to resolve subsalt imaging challenges. In this paper we present the project steps and demonstrate its main results.
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