Imaging the Deep Mediterranean Through Multi-Azimuth Seismic Acquisition and Processing

Abstract

Abstract At a depth of around 3km across large areas of the Nile Delta in the Mediterranean, lies a thin but complex layer of partially eroded Miocene aged anhydrite and other facies, refered to as the Messinian. Wavefield distortion, attenuation and the generation of complex multiple diffraction noise cause the quality of the underlying seismic image to be highly variable (See Figure 1). Multi-azimuth (MAZ) seismic can help resolve these issues and improve the deep pre-Messinian image. Here we discuss the acquisition and processing flow of a MAZ streamer datasets and show some of the results. The initial data analysis shows that MAZ greatly improves general image quality, signal-to-noise ratio, lateral resolution, as well as suppressing diffracted and other multiples effectively. Issues and challenges around this approach are discussed.