From Incremental to Transformational Workflows: Contemporary Imaging and What Comes Next

Summary Fundamental and incremental changes in both the technology and methodologies used in imaging are transforming the way we undertake processing and imaging projects. The drivers for this change includes factors internal to the hydrocarbon exploration and production (E&P) industry (for example - the oil price and the increasing commoditisation of, particularly, the processing part of projects) and factors driven by the outside world (for example - the pace of computer development, both in hardware and software and the rise of cloud-based systems). In this paper we will look at how the future of seismic imaging is likely to be dominated by the influence of fundamental changes to the way we build models and images of the subsurface and the merging of these two end goals of a traditional imaging project. Amongst the relevant technologies we will discuss are full waveform inversion (FWI) and the goal of high-frequency interpretable models, reflection full waveform inversion and/or reconstructed wavefield inversion (RFWI), Least-squares reverse-time migration (RTM) and the ultimate goal of closed-loop solutions. We illustrate these changes with examples from recent imaging projects in areas of complex geology.