Combination of surface and borehole seismic data for robust target-oriented imaging

Abstract

A novel application of seismic interferometry (SI) and Marchenko imaging using both surface and borehole data is presented. A series of redatuming schemes is proposed to combine both data sets for robust deep local imaging in the presence of velocity uncertainties. The redatuming schemes create a virtual acquisition geometry where both sources and receivers lie at the horizontal borehole level, thus only a local velocity model near the borehole is needed for imaging, and erroneous velocities in the shallow area have no effect on imaging around the borehole level. By joining the advantages of SI and Marchenko imaging, a macrovelocity model is no longer required and the proposed schemes use only single-component data. Furthermore, the schemes result in a set of virtual data that have fewer spurious events and internal multiples than previous virtual source redatuming methods. Two numerical examples are shown to illustrate the workflow and to demonstrate the benefits of the method. One is a synthetic model and the other is a realistic model of a field in the North Sea. In both tests, improved local images near the boreholes are obtained using the redatumed data without accurate velocities, because the redatumed data are close to the target.