Challenges of Pre-Salt Imaging in Brazil’s Santos Basin - A Case Study on a Variable-Depth Streamer Data Set

Recent offshore discoveries in the Santos Basin have drawn attention to pre-salt targets; however, seismic imaging in the Santos Basin has proven to be challenging due to the complex geology and deep pre-salt targets. Variable-depth streamer acquisition is an emerging technology that provides opportunities to increase the usable bandwidth in both the low and high frequency ranges, gain stronger low frequency penetration, and reduce acquisition related noise. However, this new acquisition poses additional challenges to seismic processing, creating a need for new processing technologies and work flows. To overcome both the geological and acquisition-related challenges, we modify the processing work flow, then utilize a real field data set of variable-depth streamer acquisition to demonstrate that variable-depth acquisition combined with advanced processing techniques is beneficial to pre-salt imaging in the Santos Basin.