Focus on land seismic technology: The near-surface challenge

Abstract

A new era in land seismic is at hand. Growing energy demand will spur greater efforts in exploration and development into regions of the world where hydrocarbons occur in land environments. Interpreters will require accurate near-surface solutions for mapping low-relief structures and stratigraphic traps, and to improve data quality for placing horizontal wells. This will require solutions to near-surface challenges, such as energy penetration, scattering, source-generated noise, surface-generated multiples, statics, and source and receiver coupling. Solutions to these problems will become possible due to advances in seismic acquisition, including simultaneous source acquisition and wireless seismic-driven ultrahigh channel systems. Additionally, advances in seismic processing technology for processing the resulting huge data volumes will be made possible by continual growth in computational capability. These advances will for the first time allow acquisition of true 3D seismic data. This will not only result in better imaging of the subsurface, but also will allow the near surface to be addressed as an imaging problem with better description of velocities and suppression of surface-related noise.