By Paul Strong, SA/NT Branch President
On 30 April 2026 the PESA SA/NT Branch held a joint meeting with the ASEG, listening to an interesting talk by consultant Peter Strauss regarding the processing of seismic data in the Cooper Basin, a topic that would be expected to be well known.
Peter challenged the conventions on seismic processing onshore Australia, with modern land 3D seismic datasets often not being fit-for-purpose when targeting smaller-scale structures, with some wells probably not having been drilled in the right place. Peter’s thesis is that, even though structures have been known from 2D seismic data for decades with structural “corrections” applied, but these have not been consistently carried through into modern 3D dataset, the processing workflows of which were originally developed for marine 3D seismic. These methods are poorly suited to land data, and so using other methods can produce better, more geologically meaningful seismic images suited to land exploration.
The 28 attendees were fascinated by Peter’s approach, with many questions asked, some from geophysicists with more than 40 years of experience working with onshore seismic data.
The SA/NT Branch thanks Peter for providing such an interesting technical insight into an alternative method of improving subsurface interpretation.
