Paper submitted to GESGB Conference (G-CON) 2026, by Dhiman Mondal, Laura Moore, Øystein Korsmo, Kristian Helgebostad, Rachel Collings (TGS), Frank Büker, Bingwen Du (Equinor) and Dirk William Wallis (ADURA)
Introduction
The Mariner Field is located on the East Shetland Platform in Block 9/11a of the UK North Sea and contains significant remaining reservoir potential. The field comprises two key Paleocene reservoirs: the deeper Maureen Formation and the more transparent, shallower Heimdal Sandstone, which exhibits a weak P-wave impedance contrast. Imaging of both prospects is challenged by significant overburden complexity, including shallow and deeper channel systems as well as sand injectites. As a result, a detailed and accurate imaging model is critical for field development and prospect delineation.
To address this, elastic Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) was applied in parallel to two distinct datasets: a larger dual-azimuth (DAZ) multi-component streamer dataset acquired in 2012, and a smaller but overlapping ocean-bottom cable (OBC) dataset from 2008. The streamer dataset provided offsets up to 3.5 km, while the OBC dataset offered azimuthally rich illumination with offsets extending to 12 km. Both inversions were carried out up to 40 Hz to capture strong model heterogeneities.
In this case study, we analyze the two parallel inversion results and assess the imaging uplift relative to vintage results from 2020, where acoustic FWI was applied to the streamer data and the OBC model was further refined using reflection tomography.