Back to results
US 10,234,578 B2Granted
Methods and systems to operate marine sources to avoid air in water effects
AssigneePGS Geophysical AS
InventorsGregg Parkes, Stian Hegna, Francis Drossaert
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In order to avoid complicated and unpredictable effects on the wavefields emitted by air guns activated at different times, methods and systems of the current disclosure are directed to computationally designing a sequence for activating subsets of air guns in a time distributed manner that minimizes the effects of air in the water surrounding the source. The sequence may be used with discrete and continuously recorded marine surveys.
Claims31
In a process for generating an image of a subterranean formation located below a body of water, the specific improvement comprising:
- determining a cone angle of a cone of emission for each sub-source of the source;
- determining a time-distributed sequence in which to activate the sub-sources of the source based on the cone angles and locations for air/water volumes in the body of water to be generated by the sub-sources, the time-distributed sequence to prevent air generated by any previously activated sub-source from contaminating a source wavefield to be generated by a next to be activated sub-source of the sequence;
- activating the sub-sources of the source in accordance with the time-distributed sequence to generate acoustic signals in the body of water above the subterranean formation;
- recording seismic data in a data storage device, the recorded seismic data generated by the receivers that measure wavefields produced by the subterranean formation in response to the acoustic signals generated by the sub-sources;
- and
- generating an image of the subterranean information based at least in part on the recorded seismic data, thereby increasing signal-to-noise ratio in the recorded seismic data and quality of the image.
3 more elements
A computer system for generating an image of a subterranean formation comprising:
- one or more processors;
- one or more data-storage devices;
- and
- a routine stored in one or more of data-storage devices that when executed by the one or more processors controls the system to carry out
- determining a cone angle of a cone of emission for each sub-source of a source, each sub-source comprising one or more air guns of the source;
- determining a time-distributed sequence in which to activate the sub-sources of the source based on the cone angles and locations for air/water volumes in the body of water to be generated by the sub-sources, the time-distributed sequence to prevent air generated by any previously activated sub-source from contaminating a source wavefield to be generated by a next to be activated sub-source of the sequence;
- activating the sub-sources of the source according to the time-distributed sequence in a body of water above a subterranean formation;
- recording seismic data in a data storage device, the recorded seismic data generated by the receivers that measure wavefields produced by the subterranean formation in response to the acoustic signals generated by the sub-sources;
- and
- generating an image of the subterranean information based at least in part on the recorded seismic data.
7 more elements
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having machine-readable instructions encoded thereon for enabling one or more processors of a computer system to generate an image of a subterranean formation by performing the operations comprising:
- determining a cone angle of a cone of emission for each sub-source of a source, each sub-source comprising one or more air guns of the source;
- determining a time-distributed sequence in which to activate the sub-sources of the source based on the cone angles and locations for air/water volumes in the body of water to be generated by the sub-sources, the time-distributed sequence to prevent air generated by any previously activated sub-source from contaminating a source wavefield to be generated by a next to be activated sub-source of the sequence;
- activating the sub-sources of the source according to the time-distributed sequence to generate acoustic signals in a body of water above a subterranean formation;
- recording seismic data in a data storage device, the recorded seismic data generated by the receivers that measure wavefields produced by the subterranean formation in response to the acoustic signals generated by the sub-sources;
- and
- generating an image of the subterranean information based at least in part on the recorded seismic data.
3 more elements
A method for manufacturing a geophysical data product, the method comprising:
- determining a cone angle of a cone of emission for each sub-source of the source, each sub-source comprising one or more air guns of the source;
- adding a first sub-source to a time-distributed sequence of sub-sources, the first sub-source obtained from a list of sub-sources that partition the source into the sub-sources;
- determining a time-distributed sequence in which to activate the sub-sources of the source based on the cone angle;
- activating the sub-sources of the source according to the time-distributed sequence to generate acoustic signals in a body of water above a subterranean formation;
- recording a wavefield emitted from the subterranean formation in response to the acoustic signals generated by the sub-sources;
- generating an image of the subterranean information based at least in part on the recorded seismic data;
- and
- recording the image of the subterranean formation in a non-transitory computer-readable medium.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.