The first edition of the EAGE Seabed Seismic Today: from Acquisition to Application was held online on 8-10 September 2020 which ran over 3 days and attracted 120 participants from 16 countries. As a committee we want to build on this success and as our theme suggests we are looking to A New Era for Seabed Seismic.

Seabed seismic technologies have evolved significantly for many decades. In fact, in the last few years they have gained a substantial market share in the offshore acquisition business. Due to the advent of automation for both deployment and retrieval operations, this technology leverages novel concepts to achieve high productivity and improved cost and quality. New ideas have emerged related to acquisition designs ranging from hybrid field configurations using seabed sensors and streamers to replacing conventional nodes with autonomous underwater vehicles. Moreover, innovative software has been developed to complement and capitalize acquisition scenarios in order to unveil high resolution and quality subsurface images for accurate reservoir characterization reducing risks and optimizing drilling operations. In addition, seabed seismic technologies can easily address new market opportunities and challenges, such as, CO2 sequestration and monitoring and in the suitable location of windfarm construction.

This workshop aims at discussing new ideas and showcasing methodologies of acquiring, processing and interpreting seabed seismic data and will pave the way for “ A New Era for Seabed Seismic”.  

TOPICS

The Technical Committee invites practitioners, innovators and industry experts to contribute to this workshop and share their achievements and challenges, which will help to bring all the attendees up to speed on seabed seismic acquisition, processing and interpretation. Case histories from the participants and theoretical developments from the researchers in the industry and from academia are also welcome. Contributors are welcome to submit an abstract of 2-4 pages in length. Submission for posters & oral presentations is welcome on all topics. Abstracts should be submitted via the EAGE website using the downloadable template. Please see suggestions for topics below:

1.      Acquisition

Subtopics

• State of the art as well as emerging seabed acquisition technologies

• Hybrid streamer-seabed surveys

• New concepts in OBS survey designs

• Cabled versus nodal receivers, retrievable versus permanent systems (PRM)

• Technology enablers such as electronic miniaturization, compressive sensing, continuous recording, simultaneous source acquisition, low frequency marine sources, autonomous nodal operations, and autonomous source vessels

• Active and passive time lapse 4D surveys

• Advances in operational efficiency and autonomous technologies

• Operational and Health safety and Environment issues related to seabed operations

2.      Processing, imaging and velocity model building

Subtopics

• Pre-processing such as sensor calibration, noise attenuation, signal processing and regularization

• Seabed-specific imaging workflows and post-imaging processing

• Benefits of seabed seismic for model building and acoustic and elastic FWI

• "Reflectivity FWI"

• Automation to overcome intensive manual iterations

3.      Case studies – From acquisition to interpretation

Subtopics

• Challenges and benefits of seabed seismic for interpretation and inversion

• Multicomponent seismic. Using all four components and the full elastic wavefield.

• 4D

• Integration of multi-physics and seabed seismic

4. Novel applications

Subtopics

• Deliverables for the geotechnical and the well construction industries

• Near seabed characterization for windfarms

• CO2 sequestration & monitoring 

• Other

Plenary sessions will be organized to cover topics that are expected to be of interest for all the attendees. Poster and break-out sessions will be organized for the experts in specific topics to dig more into the details.

This workshop is an intensive informal exchange of ideas, insights, and technical information. As such, the participants will be encouraged to share their experiences on what works all the time, what works some of the time, and what never works. Unresolved problems or unsuccessful case histories are therefore welcome and ad-hoc breakout sessions will be organized along with discussion sessions which can be used to bring valuable lessons to the foreground.