Seismic Solutions in the Val Verde Basin

Abstract

The Val Verde basin has been an underexplored basin, despite the discovery of world-class gas fields on the northern edge of the basin in the 1950s and the 1960s, because the basin was opaque to conventional seismic reflection methods. Permian Exploration was approached in 1988 to design an acquisition geometry and processing sequence that would produce data that could be used with confidence. A field test was designed to test the hypothesis that the high Q limestones at the surface of the mesas were reflecting source generated noise into receiver lines from cross-line directions. That test crossed both mesa and valley terrains and looked for noise arriving from all directions. Analysis of the test data showed that cross-line coherent noise was a significant problem and that unconventional techniques were necessary to record the reflected signal. Acquisiton of data using multiline techniques, coupled with new high-channel recording systems, exhaustive statics analysis, and powerful noise cancellation algorithms has given data the interpreter can use with confidence.