The proportion of deepwater acreage in oil company portfolios increased considerably over the past decade. New subsurface imaging challenges were encountered and required technology breakthroughs to meet business objectives. In many of these deepwater areas, the imaging challenges were increased due to complex overburden that distorted the seismic signal at the reservoir. Additionally, the requirement to extract more resources from mature basins put increased demand on seismic data quality requirements for field development and production. Conventional narrow azimuth marine seismic acquisition was reaching a technical limit in these environments and new approaches were necessary. Both towed streamer and ocean bottom seismic solutions were required to improve reservoir imaging along the value chain, from exploration to production and from shallow to deep water. Wide azimuth techniques, combined with state of the art processing, velocity modeling and depth migration became the tools of choice for seismic surveying to address the emerging subsurface imaging challenges Success in field trials led to early business uptake. New technology development, both in acquisition equipment and processing algorithms, combined with innovations in survey design and operational efficiency, enabled at-scale implementation. As a result, the last five years has seen considerable wide azimuth data coverage in some major marine basins by both operators and contractors. The momentum continues to build with the increased use of wide azimuth methods opening up new opportunities and spurring new technology development.
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