f Value of the Broadband Seismic for Interpreter and Reservoir Geophysics

Ideally, geoscientists would like seismic to provide clear, objective information about the subsurface in terms of: identification of the main geological features and stratigraphic sequences, structural elements, elastic/rock properties, potential prospects and lithology-fluid content of potential reservoirs. 3D seismic has offered the greatest benefits to seismic interpreters and reservoir geoscientists in the last few decades, but historically, seismic images have stopped short of delivering on these requirements, as the seismic bandwidth was limited due to the conventional streamer design and acquisition method. Over the last few years, starting in 2007 (Tenghamn et al. 2007) with the introduction of the dualsensor towed streamer technology, new acquisition methods and technologies have been made available with the aim of providing broader seismic bandwidth without any compromise in data quality or tradeoffs in acquisition efficiency. On one side, the combination of two sensors in the streamer cable itself enables an effective removal of the sea-surface ghost by wavefield separation, allowing us to capture the full bandwidth of the upcoming wavefield. More recently, a time and depth distributed source enables the removal of the sea surface ghost on the source side (Parkes, 2011) expanding further the frequency bandwidth. Thus, interpreters and reservoir geophysicists can now have ghost free seismic enabling a significant broadening of the seismic frequency bandwidth on the low and high side of the spectra. Some results of this latest development will be presented with an end-user perspective.