Paper Summary
The Santos Basin has proven to be a highly prolific basin over the past few decades, with
extensive exploration activities leading to the drilling and production of numerous wells. The
Santos Sul 3D seismic survey is situated in the southernmost, and less explored region of the
basin. Although this area is generally characterized by reduced structural complexity due to the relative absence of extensive salt bodies, high resolution imaging has remained as challenging. Key geological and geophysical challenges include water-bottom canyons, near-surface mass transport complexes (MTCs), polygonal faulting, carbonate build-ups, salt “fingers”, and deep-seated volcanic intrusions.
To address these challenges, we propose an integrated velocity model building workflow
incorporating information from the underlying legacy 2D seismic data, anisotropy calibration,
tomographic inversion, and Dynamic Matching Full Waveform Inversion (DM FWI). The application of this approach has resulted in significant improvements in imaging quality, both in
shallow and deep sections, including enhanced resolution of sub-basement structures.