Multi-azimuth High-resolution Tomography – Application to Offshore Nile Delta

Multi-azimuth acquisition has been shown to be beneficial for attenuating multiple diffraction energy and improving illumination. In this case study on a multi-azimuth dataset from the Nile Delta we demonstrate that multi-azimuth reflection tomographic inversion is able to resolve smaller scale velocity variations than narrow-azimuth inversion, and hence enables more accurate velocity model building in depth. Multi-azimuth inversion is capable of resolving these small scale velocity heterogeneities because of the azimuthal diversity. The gathers obtained from multi-azimuth inversion are flatter and the stack is improved compared to narrow-azimuth inversion. The resolved small scale velocity variations correlate very well with geology.