Increasing the Efficiency of Acquisition in a Busy North Sea Season - Dealing with Seismic Interference

This paper describes a new method for on-line evaluation and acceptance of seismic interference (SI). The project was split into three phases. The first phase utilized existing data with SI issues and was aimed at removing these, while at the same time defining a fixed processing flow that could be used on-board for on-line acceptance of SI noise. The second phase was a shorter field verification trial, aimed to test and verify findings from phase 1 – would the flow work and were we able to acquire good seismic data within close proximity to each other (<50 km between active seismic vessels) and still get good data? The final phase of the project was the acquisition of two larger exploration programs whilst not having to shut down for SI. The project was a success. We were able to monitor and remove SI noise – during production and to such a degree that the two vessels could reduce the distance between themselves down to ~40 km whilst still acquire good seismic data. This allowed the two vessels to optimize the acquisition such that only a few hours of downtime for time-sharing were incurred over a period of 5 weeks simultaneous acquisition.