A Highly Efficient Coil Survey Design

Azimuth-rich towed-streamer acquisition has been established as a successful method for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Azimuth-rich data acquired so far proved to have better illumination, higher signal-tonoise ratio, and improved seismic resolution. But the azimuth-rich towed-streamer acquisition configurations used in the Gulf of Mexico are all multi-vessel. Moldoveanu (2008) introduced a method of acquiring azimuth-rich with a single vessel. This paper describes a survey design for this single-vessel azimuth-rich technique that has the same acquisition effort as a 3-survey narrow azimuth survey, but delivers better sampling as a function of azimuth, offset, X and Y than a 3-survey narrow azimuth survey.