Seismic imaging in shallow water: where are we at and where might we be going?

Abstract

The Galactic 2D Seismic Imaging Study (November 2023–June 2024) sought to assess and understand what is achievable as of today and what may soon be achievable when exploring in geophysically challenging shallow-water marine regions with 2D seismic data of limited quality – in this instance, using data acquired over one such region offshore Australia’s Northern Territory. This was approached first by comparing the outputs of a commercially available state-of-the-art depth-imaging workflow as applied by four seismic processing services companies (Phase 1). Whilst broadly in agreement, the outputs of this first exercise vary significantly in some respects. An anonymised subset of the deliverables was independently assessed by a group of seismic interpreters to provide the perspective of the end user, where no one set of deliverables was found to clearly outperform the others in all aspects. These results were then contrasted against a suite of novel but under-development approaches to seismic imaging and model building, as applied by two tech startups and two academic groups (Phase 2). Whilst the potential for several of these promising technologies to either reduce cost, shorten turnaround, or improve imaging quality has been previously demonstrated when working with deep-water data, the outputs generated suggest that the additional challenges that shallow-water data entail necessitate further development before any of them might potentially supersede conventional workflows.