A proven method for acquiring highly repeatable towed streamer seismic data

Abstract

Seismic reservoir monitoring has become an important tool in the management of many fields. Monitoring subtle changes in the seismic properties of a reservoir caused by production places strong demands on seismic repeatability. A lack of repeatability limits how frequently reservoir changes can be monitored or the applicability of seismic monitoring at all. In this paper we show that towing many streamers with narrow separation, combined with cross‐line interpolation of data onto predefined sail lines, can give highly repeatable marine seismic data. Results from two controlled zero time lag monitoring experiments in the North Sea demonstrate high sensitivity to changing water level and variations in lateral positions. After corrections by deterministic tidal time shifts and spatial interpolation of the irregularly sampled streamer data, relative rms difference amplitude levels are as low as 12% for a deep, structurally complex field and as low as 6% for a shallow, structurally simple field. Reducing the degree of nonrepeatability to as low as 6% to 12% allows monitoring of smaller reflectivity changes. In terms of reservoir management this has three important benefits: (1) reservoirs with small seismic changes resulting from production can be monitored, (2) reservoirs with large seismic changes can be monitored more frequently, and (3) monitoring data can be used more quantitatively.