Predicting Free Surface Multiples without the Water: SRME on Land

Predicting Free Surface Multiples without the Water: SRME on Land
GeoConvention 2014, Expanded abstract
Keith Wilkinson, Richard Bale and Ken Gray

This paper describes a method to adapt surface related multiple elimination (SRME) to land data, which accounts for the near surface by including differential static corrections during the prediction phase. Surface corrected multiple elimination (SCME) is demonstrated using synthetic data containing both primary and first order multiple events. Compared to using SRME from surface but with no near surface correction, this method better predicts the complex structure of the multiple which arises from passage through the low velocity layer. The method is applied on a real heavy oil dataset which contains a problematic multiple with velocity which is similar to the primary. Applying SCME results in a substantial reduction of the multiple amplitude without damage to the primary events.