A New Depth Imaging Workflow for a Continuous Line Acquisition Survey in the North Sea

Continuous Line Acquisition (CLA) or data acquired during vessel turns produces datasets not only with a high fold but also with a highly variable set of azimuths in the turning areas. Processing this data for imaging will require regularisation for the fold, but just as importantly, a technique to honour the azimuths for model building. In this case study we show an example of a North Sea dataset processed in 2015 with both pre-stack time migration and pre-stack depth migration. The model building for the depth migration used an innovative approach for handling the azimuths so they could be used in the ray tracing for tomography for a more accurate model. We call this method pre-migration azimuth preservation (PMAP).