Infield Processing for Large Volume Land 3D Seismic Survey - Case Study from Kuwait

Kuwait Oil Company is currently acquiring a broadband, high-density, full-azimuth point-receiver 3D seismic survey. The operations utilize more than 200,000 channels seismic crew, the largest employed for seismic survey. The handling of the dataset in the order of 350 million traces per day (5TB of data) and processing up to a total of 2.6 billion traces (28TB of data) through the various data processing steps requires the full infield integration of acquisition and data processing. Infield data processing has been established for two main objectives: 1. to tackle different types of noise in the acquired seismic data; 2. to perform the quality control for acquired data daily. The execution of infield data processing activities which include correlation of the raw shot gathers, geometry update, quality control, comprehensive noise attenuation, digital group forming and writing final tape deliverables is accomplished on a daily basis to ensure that the data processing keeps up with acquisition production rates. Processing behind the acquision also gives an advantage for quick decision making as the field operations progress. The integration of acquisition and processing provides successful tools for quality control and on-time decision making, which positively impacts the overall project schedule.