Fresnel Zone Binning Analysis on a Nordkapp 3D Data Set

For a typical 3D seismic survey, infill shooting may be as much as 25% or more of the total cost of prime line seismic acquisition. The Fresnel Zone Binning (FZB) infill criterion is an approach designed to minimize infill costs further based on FZB calculated coverage in combination with steerable streamers. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the FZB infill criteria used in a 3D survey acquired for Statoil at Nordkapp in the Barentsea in 2010. FZB dB fold is measured in decibels (dB) down from the conventional fold calculation. Two decimated datasets were generated in addition to the full dataset where one of the data sets was decimated down to -3 dB to -4 dB. The three data scenarios were all processed independently with advanced regularization and interpolation methods and finally 3D time migrated. The processing has demonstrated that the FZB infill requirements have proved to be conservative enough; also for the -3 dB to -4 dB decimated data, to obtain high quality output from 3D pre-stack time migration.