Simplify the variable-depth streamer data processing through pre-migration deghosting: a case study from NWS Australia

Abstract

Variable-depth streamer acquisition, as one of the key marine broadband solutions, has shown great advantages in providing high resolution seismic imaging and better low frequency penetration than conventional data from examples around the world. By utilizing the notch diversity, the receiver ghost was fully removed through proprietary joint deconvolution method in the imaging domain which produces broadband imaging with bandwidth up to six octaves. However, this post-migration deghosting method requires the receiver ghost to be well preserved prior to final migration thus introduces complexity in key steps like multiple attenuation, velocity analysis and migration than the conventional processing flow. The objective of this work is to simplify the processing flow by applying bootstrap deghosting method right after shot domain de-noise. After this step, processing flow will be very similar to the conventional flow. This new flow has been tested on the variable-depth streamer data from NWS Australia. Compared to the post-migration deghosting flow, the new results not only provide similar benefit as to broader bandwidth and rich images, but also show improvement on multiple attenuation and primary preservation as well as seismic inversion.