Publications

The presence of an extensive carbonate platform in the northern part of the East Natuna Basin has been widely known since seismic was first acquired in the 1970’s. From a seismic imaging standpoint, the occurrence of a massive carbonate interval in shallower depth is one of the contributing factors causing low seismic resolution in the underlying section beneath the top of the carbonate. A 3D seismic volume that was acquired in the northern part of East Natuna and processed to PSTM in 2010 proved the existence of the carbonate platform that covers the most part of the 3D area, but also showed that PSTM processing was not sufficient to deliver good enough seismic resolution of the overall seismic dataset. Seismic 3D FWI PSDM reprocessing was applied in 2021 and showed tremendous improvement in seismic resolution, as it was able to capture greater details in the shallower section, specifically the imaging of carbonate platform. This study will showcase the development and complexities of Natuna carbonate platform by using the combination of various geophysical datasets from the latest 2021 3D FWI PSDM reprocessing. It also demonstrates the practical application of seismic palinspatic restoration to investigate the growth of a carbonate platform from early to final stage and highlight the geological features in PSDM FWI reprocessed data that previously was not able to be imaged on the original PSTM processing. Three geophysical datasets including PSDM seismic stack, velocity, and variance are utilized as the main datasets. Volumes were flattened at the base of carbonate to generate a series of seismic profiles and depth slices from base to top of carbonate. Integrating these datasets is able to divide the carbonate platform into two growth stages: a lower and an upper interval with clear velocity differences. Two carbonate regions with different seismic facies characteristics and visible barrier are identified, proving the greater complexities within the carbonate platform. Intra-reef channels, faults, and reef talus are now highly visible as the result of high resolution PSDM dataset.