Publications

Poor seismic data quality often described as amplitude ",washout", is frequently observed in many parts of the world and especially in Asian basins. These ",washouts", are typically the result of variable seismic wave propagation through complex overburden geology. When passing through the overburden, the propagating seismic wave suffers absorption, scattering and transmission losses of varying degrees, thereby causing an imprinted frequency dependant amplitude distortion on the seismic wavelet at the deeper zones of economic interest. These effects vary in extent and severity and can not only make seismic interpretation difficult, but also prevent successful seismic inversion. To ensure relative amplitude preservation at the target, it is necessary to compensate for these overburden effects prior to migration and stacking. To resolve this problem, surface consistent techniques (amplitude compensation or deconvolution) have previously been attempted but with limited success. A full tomographic solution, expected to resolve this problem, is currently an area of active research and development. However, to provide a solution today, we have taken a pragmatic approach by developing a simplified tomographic-like technique we call Overburden Compensation (O-COMP). This technique estimates spatial relative wavelet distortions and applies surface consistent, frequency-dependent amplitude factors to compensate for the distortions. In this paper we discuss this new method and demonstrate its application with a seismic dataset from the Malay Basin. In comparisons, the method produces superior results to surface consistent deconvolution (SCD), surface consistent amplitude compensation (SCAC), or their combination. In addition, the O-COMP method produces a stable seismic wavelet suitable for a following inversion stage.