Broadband Acquisition and Processing of Variable Depth Streamer Data - A Case Study from Deep Water Offshore South China

Abstract

Exploration of deep-water oil and gas faces many challenges in the South China Sea, where its average water depth is more than 1,000 meters, and most potential oil and gas targets are in complex geological structure. Variable depth towed streamer acquisition is a broadband streamer acquisition technique where the depth profile of the streamer is optimized. This technique allows the streamers to be towed at an average depth of several tens of meters, which combined with the use of solid streamers, ensures the raw data has an exceptionally good signal-to-noise ratio, especially at low frequencies. With variable-depth streamer acquisition and processing method, we successfully broaden the dominant frequencies of the seismic data to 3~200 Hz, leading to high-resolution seismic imaging.