Paper Summary

The Santos Basin, offshore Brazil, is a geophysically challenging area to image due to the presence of evaporite sequence layers, carbonate layers and massive salts across the region. In addition, the rugose water bottom causes very strong multiples that are both in and out of the plane of the section. A case study undertaken to assess the impact of a fully-revised pre-processing and imaging flow demonstrates that newer pre-processing technology can deliver significantly improved imaging results, particularly in the pre-salt section. A Pre-stack Depth Migration (PSDM) using the newly pre-processed data as input and utilizing both Kirchhoff and Reverse Time Migration (RTM) algorithms, plus a correction for Tilted Transverse Isotropy (TTI), shows considerable uplift in comparison with the previous isotropic Kirchhoff depth migration.