Ultra-Large-Scale Wide-Azimuth Acquisition and Broadband Imaging in the Campeche Basin

Summary The recent opening of Mexican acreage to foreign companies created a need for reliable regional interpretation over large prospective areas and lead to the wide-azimuth acquisition of new seismic data over ∼70,000 km2 in the Campeche basin. In this work, we discuss the overall acquisition and imaging strategy, allowing us to create high-quality, contiguous, broad-band images over large area of extreme geologic complexity in a short turnaround time. We describe all aspects of this strategy from the staged acquisition and fast-track products delivery, through broad-band processing and high-resolution anisotropic earth model building, to the use of complementary migration algorithms enabling supra-salt and subsalt target evaluation in this vast and prospective area located in the most southern part of the Gulf of Mexico.