Technical paper

Critical reflection illumination analysis

Jun Cao1 and Joel D. Brewer1
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Abstract
Poor imaging is frequently observed in many subsalt regions, making the subsalt stratigraphy interpretation and prospect evaluation challenging. We propose a critical reflection illumination analysis to evaluate subsalt illumination in areas where high-velocity contrasts create illumination and imaging shadows. Critical reflection often occurs at the base or flank of salt bodies. If critical reflection occurred, continued iterations of processing and imaging would generate little, if any, improvement in imaging results. Similarly, increasing the offset/azimuth of the acquisition would offer limited or no advantage. We introduce the critical reflection illumination map and illumination rose diagram to efficiently and effectively evaluate the probability of critical reflection for the target. This analysis can help avoid expensive processing, imaging, and acquisition efforts for areas that are in the critical/postcritical reflection regime. Critical reflection illumination analysis can also be applied to other high-velocity contrast scenarios.

Introduction Extensive exploration for more than a century has left remaining global reserves in more complex and challenging geologic and geophysical settings. In recent years, the industry has developed many advanced seismic acquisition, processing, and migration technologies to improve imaging in seismically challenging regions, such as the subsalt area in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). New acquisition configurations such as wide azimuth (WAZ), multi-azimuth, rich azimuth, longoffset streamers, and ocean-bottom systems (e.g., Howard and Moldoveanu, 2006; Keggin et al., 2006; Michell et al., 2006; Beaudoin and Ross, 2007; Brice, 2011) have been proposed to improve illumination, and thus imaging, compared to conventional narrowazimuth acquisition. On the processing and migration side, 3D surface-related multiple elimination (SRME) helps mitigate artifacts generated by multiples, and anisotropic reverse time migration (RTM) (e.g., Fletcher et al., 2009; Zhang and Zhang, 2009) overcomes the limitations of ray-based and one-way wave equation based isotropic migration. These advanced acquisition, processing, and migration technologies have improved imaging in many areas, but the subsalt imaging problem remains. We often observe poorly imaged subsalt sediment structures close to the base of salt body (BOS), even though the BOS above them may be well imaged, as shown in Figure 1 for the benchmark SEG/EAGE salt model imaging and in Figure 2 for a deep-water GOM subsalt imaging example. The poorly imaged structure
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may be steep (Figure 1) or relatively flat (Figure 2). When interpreters see images similar to Figure 2, they may ask where the horizon goes, and whether or how we can better image the missing part. Factors that may produce poor imaging include limited acquisition aperture, limited migration aperture, and inaccuracy of the migration model and migration operator. The image in Figure 2 is generated by the most accurate imaging currently available, RTM, of synthetic data using the true model. We use a much wider migration aperture than the industry standard. We increase the acquisition offset from standard WAZ (7 km 4 km) to a maximum of 14 km along both inline and crossline directions, but the image shows no improvement in the wipeout zone. The well-imaged and unimaged parts actually contain the same dip, but different overburden BOS geometries. Analysis of the wave propagation between BOS and target horizon shows that the critical reflection phenomenon at the BOS is the dominant factor producing the poor subsalt imaging. This phenomenon is created by the relative geometry/angle between the subsalt structure and the overlying BOS rather than the dip of the structure or the dip of the BOS itself, in addition to the velocity contrast at the BOS. When the reflected wave from the target structure is postcritical at the BOS, the transmitted/head wave has little chance of reaching surface streamers with strong energy. In that case, additional processing and/or imaging iterations may not improve the imaging of that subsalt target, and increasing the offset or azimuth range of the acquisition system also has little impact on improving the image quality.

ConocoPhillips. E-mail: Jun.Cao2@ConocoPhillips.com; Joel.D.Brewer@ConocoPhillips.com. Manuscript received by the Editor 5 March 2013; revised manuscript received 6 May 2013; published online 26 July 2013. This paper appears in INTERPRETATION, Vol. 1, No. 1 (August 2013); p. T57T61, 7 FIGS.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/INT-2013-0031.1. 2013 Society of Exploration Geophysicists and American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.

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Additional seismic data processing and/or acquisition can be expensive and may not provide helpful information for imaging and interpreting the target in the postcritical regime. Therefore, the subsalt target illumination related to the critical reflection provides important information for imaging and interpretation. Standard ray-based or one-way wave equation-based illumination tools have been used to analyze the subsalt illumination (e.g., Xie et al., 2006; Liao et al., 2009), but these methods propagate the waves through the model between the target and the sources and receivers. Ray theory and one-way wave equation have inherent difficulty in models with a complex sharp velocity contrast, for example, the sediment-salt interface. One-way wave equation based methods also bear the inherent difficulty of propagating wide-angle waves accurately. In this paper, we propose an effective localized analysis to evaluate the subsalt illumination specifically related to

the critical reflection phenomena at the BOS, namely, critical reflection illumination analysis. This analysis can also be used in other high-velocity overburden scenarios, such as in the presence of basalt or carbonates. Critical reflection illumination analysis In this paper, we use 2D diagrams to illustrate the idea for simplicity, but all analyses are performed in 3D. Assuming the wave impinges the BOS with incident angle i (Figure 3), if the incident angle is equal to or larger than the critical angle, which is determined by the salt and sediment velocities at the incident location, most of the incident energy to the BOS is reflected away from the salt interface, where the transmitted/head wave has little chance to reach the sensors above the BOS. In critical reflection illumination analysis, the propagation of seismic energy is calculated from each point of interest along respective trajectories, satisfying Snells law for arriving and departing wave paths (Figure 4). For each pair of trajectories, if any trajectory is critical or postcritical at the BOS, the illumination contributed by that wave pair to the target point will be zero; otherwise, its contribution is counted. This process is repeated at the target point for waves with different incident angles and azimuth angles. The illumination contributions from all the wave paths are then summed to give the final critical reflection illumination strength at that location.

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Figure 1. The model and migrated image of the 2D SEG/ EAGE salt model (after Cao and Wu, 2009). The circled area shows the poor imaging of a steep structure under a well-imaged BOS. Figure 3. Diagram illustrating how energy propagates upward through the boundary between the sediment and salt body.

Figure 2. A representative subsalt 3D image. The circled area shows the poor imaging of a relatively flat target under a wellimaged BOS. T58 Interpretation / August 2013

Figure 4. Diagram illustrating the undertaken analysis for one wave pair from a point on a target horizon. The symbols i and c are the incident angles and critical angles, respectively at the BOS for the two wave pairs.

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The described procedure provides the basis for two types of critical reflection illumination analysis. The first type focuses on the critical reflection illumination for a given target horizon. A horizon map can be generated with this analysis to illustrate the illumination strength for each location of the horizon. From this, we can determine the locations of the postcritical areas that will be hard to image. The second analysis shows critical reflection illumination strength for a given target location. It generates a dip-azimuth domain illumination rose diagram to show the illumination strength for all possible target structural orientations (or dipazimuth combinations) at the given location. The rose diagram also provides the degree of precritical or postcritical for the current interpreted horizon at the analyzed point. Critical reflection illumination analysis helps avoid expensive but insignificant iterations of processing, imaging, and acquisition for areas in the postcritical regime. Favorable features of the proposed illumination analysis include the following aspects. First, wave only propagates in the smoothly varying subsalt sediment, as opposed to typical illumination analysis methods with wave propagating through the complex salt body, which is inherently difficult for those widely used raybased and one-way wave equation based methods. Ray tracing is used in this implementation because ray theory is valid and accurate to describe the wave propagation in this smoothly varying area. Second, this analysis is efficient, which allows for an interactive and

iterative analysis to evaluate various interpretation scenarios that could include different target horizons, BOS geometries, and velocity models. Results We apply the critical reflection illumination analysis to a deep-water GOM model with a salt body. Figure 5 shows the critical reflection illumination map for one interpretation of the subsalt target horizon. In the map, red means completely precritical and blue means completely postcritical. In the area of interest, the illumination map shows a narrow (blue) band of the postcritical area bounded by the white dashed polygon. Scattered postcritical areas also exist in the down-dip region. Figure 6 shows the root mean square image amplitude on the horizon generated by 3D RTM using data with a maximum offset of 14 km. The poorly imaged areas, including those detailed isolated down-dip patches, match well with the postcritical areas shown in the illumination map in Figure 5. Most of the light green image amplitude within the white polygon and adjacent to the top of the polygon shown in Figure 6 is not extracted from the image of the horizon, but from the adjacent BOS image because the horizon and BOS are so close in those areas. This indicates that these postcritical areas will be hard to image with acoustic seismic using sources and receivers above the BOS, even using data with very long offset and wide azimuth.

Figure 5. Critical reflection illumination map for a subsalt target horizon in a deepwater GOM model. The blue areas indicate the completely postcritical regions, i.e., the shadow zones of imaging.

Figure 6. Root mean square image amplitude on the horizon generated by RTM using data with a maximum offset of 14 km for the same horizon as in Figure 5. Most of the light green image amplitude within the white polygon and adjacent to the top of the polygon is not extracted from the image of the horizon but from the adjacent BOS image because the horizon and BOS are so close in those areas. Interpretation / August 2013 T59

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The difficult areas might be imaged adequately by the VSP data (e.g., Zhuo and Ting, 2010) or through converted wavepath migration (e.g., Wu et al., 2010). Figure 7 displays critical reflection illumination rose diagrams in the structure dip-azimuth domain at two representative subsalt locations on the horizon. One location is well-imaged under a relatively flat BOS (Figure 7a). The illumination shows that the current horizon interpretation at this location (cross in the figure) lies completely in the precritical regime. The other location is not imaged under a very steep BOS (Figure 7b). The rose diagram shows that the current

horizon interpretation at this location (cross in the figure) lies completely in the postcritical regime, which causes the poor image. The illumination rose diagram also indicates that even the current interpretation at this location has large uncertainty, e.g., 30 of change in the dip and azimuth, this location will still not be imaged. The examples seem consistent with a traditional view: good image under relatively flat BOS and poor image under steep BOS. In reality, the illumination and imaging is determined by the relative 3D geometry between the target horizon and overlying BOS. We can clearly see this from Figure 7b: A horizon with the same dip but with a different azimuth (40 instead of 160) lies in the good illumination regime. Conclusions We propose an efficient and effective localized critical reflection illumination analysis to evaluate subsalt illumination related to critical reflection phenomena, which can occur at the base or flank of salt bodies and cause poor imaging in many subsalt areas. The produced illumination map and illumination dip-azimuth rose diagram provide effective tools to evaluate the probability of critical reflection for the target. The proposed analysis can then help avoid additional processing, imaging, and acquisition efforts, which may not provide the desired improvement of the target imaging and interpretation. Application of this analysis to a deepwater GOM field shows its impact to the business. This analysis can also be applied to other high-velocity contrast scenarios. Acknowledgments The authors thank the editor Yonghe Sun, associate editor Hongliu Zeng, reviewer Ru-Shan Wu and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that improved this manuscript. We gratefully thank our colleagues Charles Mosher, Donald Ashabranner, and Erik Keskula for the helpful discussions, Ramses Meza and Meimei Tang for providing the model and horizon used in the example, Xianhuai Zhu and Sanjay Sood for the modeling and imaging work, and Brian Macy, Jerry Yuan, and Jianchao Li for the helpful discussions on ray tracing. We appreciate editing by Charles Mosher, Amy Sharp, and Heather Shelly that improved the manuscript. We also thank Bradley Bankhead, Erik Keskula, Ken Tubman, and Jason Lore, the management of ConocoPhillips, and its partners Anadarko Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Cobalt International Energy, and Venari Resources for supporting and giving permission to publish this work.

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Figure 7. Critical reflection illumination rose diagrams in dip-azimuth domain at two representative subsalt locations. (a) A well-imaged location under a relatively flat BOS. (b) A poorly imaged location under a steep BOS. The cross represents the dip and azimuth of the current interpretation at the analyzed location. T60 Interpretation / August 2013

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mad dog: Have we solved the subsalt imaging problem?: 76th Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 29052909. Wu, R. S., R. Yan, X. B. Xie, and D. Walraven, 2010, Elastic convertedwave path migration for subsalt imaging: 80th Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 31763180. Xie, X. B., S. W. Jin, and R. S. Wu, 2006, Wave-equationbased seismic illumination analysis: Geophysics, 71, no. 5, S169S177, doi: 10.1190/1.2227619. Zhang, Y., and H. Zhang, 2009, A stable TTI reverse time migration and its implementation: 79th Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 27942798. Zhuo, L., and C. Ting, 2010, Subsalt steep dip imaging study with 3D acoustic modeling: 80th Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 29562960. Jun Cao received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in geophysics from Peking University and a Ph.D. (2008) in geophysics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a senior research geophysicist in ConocoPhillips. His research interests include seismic illumination analysis, imaging, inversion, and wave propagation. He is a member of SEG and EAGE.

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