A modeling approach to wide-azimuth design for subsalt imaging

Abstract

Subsalt image quality in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is often very poor with conventional narrow-azimuth towed-streamer (NATS) surveys even when the most advanced processing and imaging methods available are used with great care. The reasons most often cited for the poor image quality are failure to adequately suppress free surface multiples, errors in the velocity model, and illumination problems.