Identifying and Responding to Prioritized and Pressing Challenges in Exploration Seismology

The current frontier drilling success rate in the deep water Gulf of Mexico, of one in ten, at upwards
of 250 million dollars per drill, reflects and exemplifies the magnitude and significance of the
challenges we face in exploration seismology. The GOM deep water drilling success rate points to
the gap between our collective seismic capability today, and the level of increased effectiveness that
will be needed to respond to that challenge and to move towards significantly reducing and filling
that gap.
All scientific methods and algorithms have assumptions and prerequisites. Methods are effective
when their assumptions are satisfied. Challenges arise in exploration seismology when the
prerequisites and assumptions behind seismic methods are not satisfied, and that can contribute to
dry hole exploration drilling or locating suboptimal development wells. To our thinking, there are
two ways to respond to that challenge: (1) find new and more effective ways to satisfy the
requirements of current methods, and (2) develop fundamentally new methods that can deliver ( and
to go beyond) what current seismic methods can provide, without requiring, for example, the
prerequisites, and subsurface information that current methods frequently require to be effective.
We adopt one or the other of these two approaches for different links and steps in the seismic
processing chain.
Many seismic methods require subsurface information to be effective. As the industry trend moves
to more remote and complex and complicated off-shore and on-shore plays that requirement for
accurate subsurface information can become increasing difficult , or impossible, to satisfy. We have
produced the only comprehensive and consistent strategy where every single step in the seismic
processing chain, and every single seismic goal and objective, can be achieved directly and without
subsurface information. Among seismic processing objectives are identifying and utilizing the
reference wave-field, de-ghosting, multiple removal, depth imaging, target identification and target
changes, in a static or time lapse sense , and Q compensation without needing or knowing Q. The
projects within our program include off-shore and on-shore seismic E&P processing research, for
marine towed streamer, OBS, and on-shore surface and subsurface( buried) measurements.
In this presentation , we will describe that overall strategy, and will present what has been delivered
with stand-alone capability to-date, methods that were originally considered radical and greeted
with considerable skepticism, and are now considered mainstream and conventional within the
seismic processing tool-box. Equally , if not more important, we will describe significant
fundamental and high priority open issues, and research opportunities, that will require new
concepts, approaches and thinking, and our plans going forward.
For more, refer
http://mosrp.uh.edu/news/a-b-weglein-nov-2014-m-osrp-executive-summary-and-2-video-forkuwait-oil-company-seg-workshop-december-1-3-2014
http://mosrp.uh.edu/events/event-news/weglein-multiples-signal-or-noise-submitted-paper-and2014-seg-rara-video
Arthur B. Weglein
Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program, University of Houston