Atlantic Richfield Company

Vaughn L Ball

Dennis Corrigan

A method and computer system for applying corrections to dual sensor ocean bottom cable marine seismic signals, for purposes of eliminating ghosts and reverberations, are disclosed. According to the disclosed method and system, both phase and amplitude corrections are derived in common receiver gathers, and applied to each geophone trace in the gather; preferably, the derivation of the corrections is performed on a limited offset common receiver gather. The phase correction is determined by minimizing a folded cross-correlation of the hydrophone and geophone signals over varying phase angles, with the appropriate phase correction corresponding to the angle at which the minimum is obtained; preferably, stacked cross-correlations are used in the phase correction determination to reduce the effects of random noise. The phase correction is then applied to the geophone traces in the gather, and an amplitude correction is derived by minimizing a cross-ghosting relationship. Preferably, the cross-ghosting minimization is based upon stacked cross-correlations of the geophone and hydrophone signals and a stacked hydrophone autocorrelation, to eliminate the effects of coherent noise on the geophone trace and the effects of random noise on both the geophone and hydrophone traces. The amplitude correction is then applied to each of the geophone traces in the gather, and the summation scalar is then derived and used to sum the geophone and hydrophone traces for each source-receiver path. The summation scalar may be selected to compensate not only for ghosts, but also for receiver-side reverberations. The summation scalar may also be derived using an estimate for the seafloor reflectivity that takes into account source-side reverberations.

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Kemang, Indonesia

Vaughn L Ball