Unlocking unprecedented seismic resolution with FWI Imaging

A high-resolution seismic image is of great importance to exploration and production in many ways, such as bypassing drilling hazards and identifying compartmentalized reservoirs. To achieve seismic resolution as high as possible, the conventional seismic imaging process takes more of a linear approach to deal with one or a few specific issues at a time, such as noise and multiple attenuation, source and receiver deghosting, velocity errors, illumination holes, and migration swings. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) Imaging models and uses the full-wavefield data, including primaries and multiples (ghost included) and reflection and transmission waves, to iteratively invert for the reflectivity together with velocity and thus is an elegant solution to resolve those issues in one (iterative) inversion. FWI Imaging has proven to be a superior method for providing seismic images of greatly improved illumination, S/N, focusing, and thus better resolution, over conventional imaging methods. We demonstrate with a towed-streamer data set and an OBN data set that FWI Imaging with a frequency close to the temporal resolution limit of seismic data (100 Hz or higher) can provide seismic images of unprecedented resolution from the recorded seismic data, which has been impossible to achieve with conventional imaging methods.