3-D Land Seismic Surveys: Definition of Geophysical Parameter

In many major oil companies 3-D surveys increased exponentially from 1990 to 1996 to cover the majority of their offshore fields. Nowadays 3-D surveys are also widely used for onshore fields. Specific pre-planning tools were developed to estimate all characteristics of the future acquisition such as offset, fold and azimuth distributions, effects of surface obstacles, make up shots, etc. The pre-planning aims at defining the geological targets of the 3-D with the associated geophysical parameters, design and costs. This paper introduces the terminology used in 3-D technology. The first part is an illustrated glossary. The methodology described in the second part offers to the 3-D planner to very quickly and safely select the most important geophysical parameters based on wave propagation fundamentals and principles. In addition many practical rules, similar to rules of the thumb, are given.