Leveraging on HPC to Feed the Appraisal Campaign with Real-Time-Update Seismic Volumes

Summary We present the main results of a Velocity Model Building (VMB) and a Prestack Depth Migration (PSDM) project in a southwestern area of the offshore Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of the project was to support the characterization of the exploration targets, the optimization of the well trajectories and the de-risking of the drilling activities by providing the highest resolution depth imaging velocities and images of the subsurface, calibrated at the three available wells. The project was carried out by an integrated team of geophysicists, geologists and explorationists. The involvement of structural geologist is a regular procedure in such complex geological settings and was crucial for embedding salt tectonic concepts into the geophysical model. Furthermore, leveraging on the high computational capacity, several multiple salt scenarios were assessed, reducing the uncertainties in the most challenging areas: during the drilling of the first appraisal well, data were imaged with three different salt scenarios, exploiting all the available information coming from the live data from the well.