3-D Seismic Refl ection Imaging Workshop 2005 – Opportunities for IODP Site Survey Collaboration

Abstract

The capability of the U.S. academic marine geoscience fl eet will be signifi cantly improved with the addition of the research vessel Marcus G. Langseth in 2006 (Fig. 1). The Langseth, which until recently was collecting commercial quality 3-D seismic data for WesternGeco as the Western Legend, will provide seismic acquisition capabilities well beyond those currently available to U.S. scientists by allowing the systematic collection of high-quality, 3-D seismic data in a wide variety of environments around the globe. To date, a small number of 3-D seismic data acquisition cruises have been run in the U.S. academic community using single streamer vessels acquiring 3-D grids by multiple closely spaced lines. This method of acquiring 3-D data is very ineffi cient, and limitations such as minimal streamer navigation cause data quality to be less than desirable. The Langseth will make it possible for the academic community to acquire 3-D seismic data in a time-effi cient and cost-effective manner and of comparable quality to industry exploration. In the commercial sector the introduction of 3-D seismic acquisition is credited as one of the advances in technology that produced the three most signifi cant increments in oil fi eld discovery rate in the last fi fty years. Best practices for 3-D seismic data acquisition are now well understood and available in extensive literature, and processing software for 3-D data is now readily available and very stable. Moreover, there is much experience in the exploration industry on the processing and analysis of 3-D data sets. With the acquisition of the Langseth, the academic sector is poised to take advantage of these developments and gain a similar major advance in scientifi c discoveries. At the same time, because of the very limited experience in our community with the 3-D approach, many scientists are not fully apprised of the range of new problems that become accessible to study.