Taking seismic acquisition artefacts beyond mitigation

Seismic acquisition footprint is a problematic noise artefact in seismic data which if left un-attenuated distorts recorded primary data in pre- and post-stack datasets and so comprises processing and interpretation quality. A conventional method of attenuating this orthogonal geometry acquisition footprint is the application of a 3D Kx-Ky frequency-slice, wavenumber notch filter on pre-stack offset vector tiles (OVT) and post-stack data. However, this approach may leave residual unfiltered acquisition footprint noise. This is because any discontinuities in seismic amplitudes have the potential to be interpreted as a fracture network or faults. The attenuation of an acquisition footprint is a compromise between successfully removing these amplitude discontinuities while preserving geologically-related ones. This paper attempts to address seismic acquisition footprint attenuation via a cascaded processing flow which aims to remove this noise completely without affecting primary amplitude.