October 2012
Features
Viewing the subsurface in five dimensions
The oil and gas industry, including Shell, has spent many millions of dollars acquiring wide-azimuth (WAZ) seismic data around the world. The industry also continues to develop seismic acquisition strategies and processing tools to reduce data costs and optimally de-noise and image it. However, few tools are yet available to interpret the data in all five dimensions of the WAZ data space: two coordinates that position the seismic trace on the surface of the earth; one vertical time or depth axis; and two coordinates that relate the separation between the seismic source and the receiver in distance and angle (azimuth).
