Petrotech-2010

31 October-3 November 2010, New Delhi, India

Paper ID : 20100470

AN ADVANCED PROCESSING APPROACH FOR NOISE

ATTENUATION IN SIRTE BASIN, LIBYA: A CASE STUDY
D.N.Murthy, D.S.Manral, A.K.Khanna
Oil India Ltd., Duliajan, Assam, India,
Email : dnmurthy@oilindia.in

Abstract

The evaluation of sedimentary basins of Libya was controlled by tectonic movement. Libya has five
major onshore sedimentary basins; Sirt basin, Muruzuq basin, Kufra basin, Ghadamis basin,
Cyrenaica platform and one offshore basin; Tripolitanian basin. The study area is situated on the
western rim of the Sirte basin. To ascertain the prospectivety of the area a large volume of 80 fold 2D
seismic data was acquired with vibrator as source. The acquired data quality was fair to good across
the area of operation depending on dips of formation, topography and presence of high velocity
anhydrite layer near the surface. The presence of hilly terrain and very hard rock fragments with loose
sand on the surface further compounded the problem. After acquiring the data, the prime objective
was to process the same with improved S/N ratio, so that the resultant seismic can be used for
meaningful interpretation of the subsurface geological features of interest in hydrocarbon exploration.
The raw shot records are contaminated with various noises viz. low frequency and velocity ground
roll, wind noise, shallow refractions, air waves, other coherent and random noise. Though various
algorithms are in practice to segregate the signal from the noise for achieving better S/N ratio,
conventional processing techniques are not found successful in effective noise suppression in
geologically complex settings. In this paper the results of effective noise attenuation achieved by
using an advanced processing technique called Leading Intelligent Filtering Technique (LIFT) are
being presented. Lift has proved to be an efficient technique for attenuating random and coherent
noise, preservation of signal, conditioning of data for all pre stack processing work viz. velocity
analysis , residual statics calculation/ application, pre stack time and depth migration work.

Introduction

Libya, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), holds the largest
proven oil reserves in Africa. According to the 2008 BP Statistical Energy Survey, Libya had proved oil
reserves of 41.464 billion barrels at the end of 2007 or 3.34 % of the world's reserves. Oil exploration
in Libya began in 1955, however, despite more than half a century of exploration, it remained largely
unexplored with vast oil and gas potential untapped.

Libya has five major onshore sedimentary basins; Sirt Basin, Murzuq Basin, Kufra Basin, Ghadamis
Basin, Cyrenaica Platform and one Offshore Basin Tripolitanian. The main producing basins of Libya
are in order of importance the Sirt, Ghadamis, Murzuq and the offshore Tripolitanian basin. The study
area is a part of western Sirte-basin of Libya. 2D Vibroseis data of various vintages is available in the
area including OIL’s recent data acquisition. In all the seismic data collected so far, noise in some of
the profiles/areas was of concern.

Geology of the area

The Sirte Basin with an area of 492,000 km2 is a Mesozoic-Tertiary rift system formed on the northern
edge of the continental plate margin of Africa. The Sirte Basin can be divided in to three divisions viz.
Eastern Sirte Basin, Central Sirte Basin & Western Sirte Basin. The basin is characterized by multiple
source rocks, multiple reservoirs, good seals, variety of traps and medium to giant fields . During the
rifting phase in the Sirte Basin, a series of platforms, horsts and troughs developed. Eustatic changes
in the sea level and differential subsidence ensued cyclic sedimentation in this Basin.

The Sirte Basin province contains one dominant & principal petroleum system, the Sirte Zelten
system. The Upper Cretaceous Sirte Shale is the effective source rock in the area. The reservoirs
range in rock type & age from fractured Precambrian basement, clastic reservoirs in Cambrian-

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Ordovician Gargaf sandstones and Lower Cretaceous Nubian (Sarir) Sandstone to Paleocene Zelten
formation and Eocene carbonates. Hydrocarbon resources are approx. equally divided between
carbonate & clastic reservoirs (Pre-Tertiary dominantly clastic , Tertiary dominantly carbonate
reservoirs).

Although carbonates & shales dominate much of the Tertiary sequence, the evaporites & salt deposits
of the Eocene Gir formation (Hon Evaporites member) are of the utmost importance to petroleum
accumulation in the Sirte Basin province because they form essential seals for the hydrocarbons
migrating out of the Upper Cretaceous into reservoirs of many ages along the faulted horsts and
grabens. The dominant trap style is structural with remainder considered stratigraphic or a
combination of the two.

The study area is situated on the western rim of the Sirte Basin within which several major structural
elements are present viz. Uaddan Uplift, Western Graben, Dor El Abd Graben, Zellah Trough and
Dahra Platform (Figure 1). The area is covered mostly with scrub desert with an average elevation
of around 240 m, however, in the western part of the area the elevations are rising to 600 m
approx.

Study Area

Figure 1. Map showing study area (Western Sirte basin – Figure 2: Seismic Coverage in and
Libya) around the study area

Seismic data acquisition & processing concern

The area under study has been surveyed with

various geometry, spreads, channels, foldage,
near & far offsets , however, processed data with
various sequences & workflows has given poor
delineation of shallow & deeper formations/
sequences and so the structural features in the
area. The seismic data acquired by Oil India is
shown in Seismic Coverage map (Figure 2). The
2D seismic data acquired with 80 fold in this
region (Acquisition parameters shown in the
Table-1) characterized by strong coherent
(Ground roll and linear noise of different type with
different velocities that can not be completely
suppressed by using conventional processing
tools) and random noise shown (Figure3).
Figure 3: Raw data with coherent noise & their

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spectral analysis
Acquisition Parameters
Recording instrument SN 428XL
Geometry Symmetrical-Split Spread
Source VIBROSEIS
Sweep Length 16 seconds
No. of sweeps 12 (4 x 3)
Sweep –Frequency 8-80 HZ
Source spacing 40 m
Receiver spacing 20 m
Near offset 30 m
Far offset 3210m
Sampling interval 2 ms

Table-1: Parameters used for 2D Seismic data acquisition in Sirte Basin, Libya

The presence of near surface high velocity Anhydrate layer in the larger part of the area caused the
energy penetration less and made the signal poor in this complex subsurface geological environment.
The seismic reflections are shallow and confined to 1.0-1.5 seconds and are obscured by very strong
coherent noise and ground rolls.

Possible Solution ; Methodology and Analysis

The Lines taken up for the advanced processing approach are the highlighted with white color on the
Base map (Figure2).. Due to the presence of near surface high velocity Anhydrate layer the energy
penetration is less and making the signal poor along with complex subsurface geology.

Though a number of algorithms are in practice to separate the signal from undesired noise and to
achieve good S/N ratio, conventional processing techniques are at times not effective in noise
suppression, where a special approach is required. Many processing tools that are used in the
conventional processing flow can not results in effective noise suppression and have their own
limitations, such as Band pass filters, F-K filters, Radon filers or F-X filters alone. For instance band
pass filter can not eliminate the entire spectrum of ground roll and the data will be still left with some
undesired noise. Similarly using F-K filter alone, Transforming the data from T-X domain to F-K
domain in order to eliminate the low frequency noise, the signal is not preserved and loose its original
characteristics.

Most noise suppression methods stop at the signal model, i.e. the signal model itself is the output of
the noise attenuation program. Some methods add back a percentage of the original input data.
Adding back a percentage of input means adding some of the noise which was removed
systematically with hard work. It is done since it is known that the signal estimation is imperfect.
Adding back some of the noisy input data is in a way to diminish some artifacts created by the
assumptions of the mathematical model. Actually, the reason for adding-back input data is to obtain a
reasonable output / result which will look more ‘realistic’ and less 'synthetic'. The raw field data with
coherent noise & ground roll and after the use of Bandpass & F- K filtering for noise attenuation i.e.
conventional processing are shown in Figure 4 & 5 respectively. The result is not satisfying as the
approach adopted neither preserved the signal nor delivered the improved signal to noise ratiots.

In this paper, we want to demonstrate, how effectively the liner coherent noise and ground roll are
suppressed and hidden reflectors are brought out using an advanced processing technique called
Leading Intelligent Filtering Technique (LIFT) to get confidence for further velocity analysis and to
better image the subsurface. In Lift, rather than simply modeling the signal, or even adding back a
percentage of the input, it estimates the residual signal removed during the signal modeling and
incorporates this in the data re-construction.

In principle, we have original raw field data (say ORG) having signal and noise with their low & high
frequency components. Now the data is analyzed and only the low frequency component of data (say
upto 20 Hz) dominated by mainly noise (but have low frequency signal also) is passed through Low

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Bandpass filtering and stored (say LP). Now if we subtract this LP from ORG, then only high
frequency content of data (say REMAIN) will be obtained ( i.e. ORG – LP = REMAIN). Now we
process only the LP component of the data to get best signal component out of it (in conventional
processing, either we avoid this LP low frequency component data completely or add a small percent
of it back to filtered data as explained above). This is done with the help of one or more (in
combination) conventional technique i.e. F-K filtering and/or Radon filtering and /on F-X decon or any
complex workflow to achieve the Residual signal (say RSIG) from LP component. Now we add
REMAIN i.e. high frequency content of data and RSIG i.e. Residual signal obtained from low

Figure 4: Raw data with coherent noise & Figure 5: Output obtained after conventional
ground roll processing i.e. using Bandpass & F-K filtering

frequency content (REMAIN+ RSIG = LIFT processed data). This is also called add back technique.
The raw original field data obscured with various noise is shown in Figure 6 and the output obtained
after rigorous LIFT technique is shown in Figure 7. In carrying out above processing, the eliminated
undesired noise can be seen in Figure 8. . Figure 7 & 9 showing the results of effective noise
attenuation achieved by this approach and spectral analysis before and after noise attenuation
respectively.The High frequency noise attenuation is done by using TFCLEAN (noise suppression
via Time-Frequency transform). The complete processing sequence with LIFT is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 6: Raw data with coherent noise & Figure 7: Output obtained after LIFT Processing

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ground roll

Figure 8: Undesired linear noise removed Figure 9 : Spectral Analysis of Raw field seismic
using LIFT data before and after using LIFT technique for
noise attenuation

Seismic Data Load & Resampling

Geometry Definition

Trace Editing & Static Correction

LIFT Processing

Predictive Deconvolution

First Pass Velocity Analysis 2×2 Km NMO Stack Section

Residual Static Application

Second Pass Velocity Analysis 1×1 Km NMO Final Stack Section

Figure 10 : Complete seismic data processing sequence with LIFT

After noise attenuation by using LIFT technique, the data was processed as shown in the processing
sequence above Figure 10. After 2 pass velocity analysis, the final stack sections were obtained with
out LIFT and with LIFT and the same are shown in Figures 11 &12 respectively. A considerable
improvement in the section can be seen by using the new approach than the section obtained using
conventional processing.

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Figure 11 : Stack section obtained using conventional processing

Figure 12 : Stack section obtained using LIFT processing approach

Conclusion :

Conventional seismic processing techniques fail to deliver the desired outputs especially when the
challenge is to address logistically difficult & geologically complex areas. Such areas are generally
characterized by poor signal to noise ratio. LIFT is a significantly different approach to noise
attenuation than what has been done traditionally. LIFT has proved to be an excellent technique to
attenuate noise & for pre-conditioning of data for further final processing steps/ workflows, while
better preserving the signal.

Acknowledgement

The authors express their sincere thanks to Shri K. K. Nath, Group General Manager (NEF) for
valuable suggestions & advise during processing & analysis of the data. The authors express their
deep sense of gratitude to Oil India Limited for providing technical & infrastructural support to carry
out the above work.

References

Thomas S. Ahlbrandt, 2001, US Geological Survey Bulletin 2202-F, The Sirte Basin Province of
Libya—Sirte-Zelten Total Petroleum System,1-33

Jason Choo, Jon Downton and Jan Dewar, 2003 , LIFT: A New Practical Approach To Noise And
Multiple Attenuation ; Paradigm: Calgary,1-11

Wang, Y., 2003, Multiple attenuation: coping with the spatial truncation effect in the Radon transform
domain, Geophysical Prospecting, vol 51, 75-87.