Solving Imaging Challenges In A Deep Water, Complex Ooze Regime - A Case Study From The Outer Vøring Area

In this paper we present a case study from the outer Vøring area in the Norwegian Sea where we applied a Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) approach to build a high resolution velocity model. The water depth and the geological complexity in the study area required the use of both reflected and transmitted waves in the inversion process. The use of reflections in the inversion data window allows updating the velocity model beyond the penetration depth of diving waves. In this case study we performed FWI on a 5500km2 dual sensor streamer dataset and we were able to build a high resolution velocity model down to 4km depth. Furthermore we demonstrate improved imaging results by combining the derived velocity model with a detailed attenuation (Q) model in a Q-Kirchhoff pre-stack depth migration algorithm (Q-KPSDM).