High-Resolution Earth Model Building and Imaging Strategies in a Pre-Carbonate Play

Correctly imaging and focusing pre-carbonate plays can be a very challenging task as overlying carbonate features and complexities of the overburden can obscure the imaging down to these deeper targets. This paper highlights that the ability to address the challenges related to pre-carbonate imaging and focusing requires a pragmatic, high-resolution, multi-azimuth depth imaging workflow. The use of implicit constraints in tomography have enabled the derivation of a geologically plausible earth model while explicit constraints were used to delineate shallow gas anomalies present in the near surface. We will also demonstrate the use of the Reverse Time Migration (RTM) algorithm and enhancement tecniques to provide a cumulative improment in imaging pre-carbonate plays.