Seismic Interference Prediction Through Finite Difference Modeling: Optimizing Operations In Barents Sea

When acquiring seismic data in crowded areas, interference need to be considered, due to its negative impact on data quality. Time-sharing represents a very expensive remedy. A “before survey” prediction of interference is important to properly plan acquisition and reduce time-sharing cost. A FD modelling based approach to predict interference is presented. The method has been applied in the Barents Sea, helping to optimize survey efficiency. The workflow can be summarized as follows:

1. 3D earth model building: Vp, Vs, and density volumes were built.
2. Earth-model verification and fine tuning through FD modeling: simulated shots were compared and calibrated with co-located 2D real seismic data, to verify and fine tune the earth model and the interference mechanism
3. 3D FD modeling of seismic interference: extra-long interfering synthetic shots were computed using the pre-built earth model.
4. Generation of curves and maps summarizing results: amplitude curves versus distance and maps of interference harshness, were created to formulate suggestion for an optimized SIMOPS plan
5. Actual interference monitoring and modeling results verification: the actual interference was measured during the survey acquisition and compared with the predicted ones in order to verify in practice the accuracy of the modeling outputs.