Paper Summary
The 2021 update to the Nigerian Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) has sparked a surge in exploration
activity in the deepwater Niger Delta, particularly within the lesser explored shale diapir zone where imaging of complex mobile shale structures has historically proven challenging. In areas like this, new 3D seismic acquisition in combination with modern processing workflows is required to de-risk exploration and evaluate potential new plays. Acquisition of approximately 11,500 km2 3D seismic data was completed in February 2024, marking the first modern multi-client 3D seismic acquisition offshore Nigeria in the last decade. The seismic data for this case study were acquired with triple source, 10 streamers and 10km cable modern acquisition. A state-of-the-art seismic model building workflow, which included tomography for background updates and Dynamic Matching Full Waveform Inversion (DM™ FWI) for finer details, was used in conjunction with gravity and magnetic modelling to build a geologically plausible model over the entire area. Gravity and magnetic data were recorded during the same multi-client seismic acquisition program.