PESA WA Sept Evening talk: Seismic imaging direct from field data – How Multi-parameter FWI can revolutionise timelines and turnarounds – A case study from the Barrow and Exmouth sub-basins

James McLeman, DUG Technology

Do you wish you could get a high-resolution seismic image in a matter of weeks? Do you wish you could skip past all that processing testing and parameterisation that seems to go on forever? Now you can.

Traditional seismic processing workflows can be extremely time-consuming with many steps and sub-steps that all need to be testing and applied. Full waveform inversion (FWI) imaging is a least-squares approach that uses the raw field data to estimate many subsurface parameters, including reflectivity, ahead of a conventional processing workflow. Since it is using the primaries, multiples and ghosts during imaging, no pre-processing is required and the result is a set of higher resolution subsurface models but in a fraction of the time of a conventional processing workflow. This novel approach delivers superior results in a reduced turnaround leading to more efficient and effective decision-making.

In this presentation, we demonstrate an 85 Hz case study using the Duyfken 3D survey, located 115 km northwest of Barrow Island. We compare a conventional processing workflow and a novel FWI imaging technique that is simultaneously inverting for velocity and reflectivity. The FWI result was obtained in a few weeks, in contrast, the conventional flow took a number of months.