Elastic imaging and its benefits — Permian Basin example

Abstract

Seismic imaging has been continuously advancing since the early days of computer revolution in the 1970s. Practical imaging during this time was carried out only in two dimensions using simplified wave equations on poststack data. Subsequently, in the early 1980s algorithm improvements in wave equation migration after the introduction of one-way phase shift methods and two-way reverse time migration occurred. Concurrently, improvements in ray-based Kirchhoff migration emerged after the introduction of eikonal and wavefront reconstruction solvers for calculation of travel times. In the late 1980s, 3D prestack Kirchhoff migration began to be used. By the early 1990s, 3D wave equation poststack migration began to be used and was followed shortly by implementation of wave equation prestack migration. After the turn of the century, 3D prestack reverse time migration became practical, and a few years later VTI, TTI, and orthorhombic rheology were introduced into the imaging.