Migration of Surface Multiples in Deepwater OBN Data

Summary In conventional seismic processing, the surface-related and internal multiples are considered as coherent noise, which are required to be removed prior to the migration. This is mainly due to the fact that that the conventional forward model used in the migration process is designed for the primary wavefield and not the total wavefield that includes all the multiples. Therefore, in case multiples are not suppressed prior to the migration, they generate cross-talk in the seismic image. However, recently much more attention has been drawn to the possibility of utilizing multiples in seismic imaging, rather than removing them. This is mainly due to the fact that the multiples can be considered as secondary sources that illuminate the subsurface many times. Therefore, they have a significant potential to overcome the shortcomings of seismic acquisition by filling the illumination gaps resulting from imperfect acquisition, especially in sparse and NAZ acquisition geometries. In this abstract we have studied the migration of surface multiples in Deep-water OBN data from the Julia field in the Gulf of Mexico. Our results from the migration of surface multiples show significant improvement in certain parts of the seismic image in comparison to the industry standard RTM mirror migration image.