From Acquisition to First Image with Full Waveform Inversion

Subsalt imaging is an industry level challenge that has existed for many years in Gulf of Mexico. Both correct salt shape and kinematically correct detailed sediment velocity are required to successfully image the reservoir level especially below salt bodies. The conventional method in the industry is to build the model from top down with flooding with sediment and salt velocity then delineate the salt bodies by manual interpretation. This process requires intensive labor and usually creates unoptimized subsalt images in the presence of complex salt geometries. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) can build a high-resolution model including salt and sediment delineation and reflectivity can be easily extracted from this model for early viewing which can be a jump start for the interpreters to browse around especially if the project is large scale. In this paper we demonstrate a quick velocity and reflectivity generation from raw acquired data.