Publications

3D Finite Difference (FD) models were designed and built to help understand the key subsurface components adversely effecting seismic imaging, and the impact seismic acquisition geometries (e.g. narrow vs. wide azimuth) may have on imaging clastic reservoirs below thick and karstified carbonates. Model building consisted of four main steps: create a realistic geologic model in Seisworks, build a 3D velocity and density model in GoCad based on the Seisworks model and well data, generate true 3D FD shot records from the GoCad model, and extract and depth migrate shots from the FD models based on both wide and narrow azimuth acquisition geometries.The entire process took approximately 3 months, including compute time, and produced a range of synthetic seismic volumes in which the quality of the reservoir and subsurface images varied considerably. The synthetic seismic volumes were able to simulate a complex geologic model accurately enough using Seisworks and GoCad, such that the FD modeling results reflected the seismic quality variations seen in real seismic data. The financial impact of this inexpensive modeling study is potentially enormous as it allows prediction of the seismic image quality using various acquisition techniques and geometries, before committing to and acquiring seismic data. This is particularly important in an area such as Bintuni Bay, where notoriously poor seismic image quality necessitates very expensive acquisition techniques in order to acquire appraisal and development quality seismic images. Part II a companion to this paper presents the interpretation of the FD Model results.