f Practical Steep-Dip Subsalt Imaging

Since the discovery of large subsalt oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, subsalt imaging has become an area of significant interest throughout the seismic industry. Because of the large salt-sediment velocity contrast, however, accomplishing accurate subsalt imaging typically requires poststack, and in many cases, prestack depth migration. In regions such as the Gulf of Mexico, sediments outside the salt can typically be described by a smoothly varying interval velocity field.