CGGVeritas is uniquely positioned to provide a full suite of wide-azimuth technologies. Our fleet of seismic recording vessels is the most versatile in the industry, providing the resources to undertake any towed-streamer marine wide-azimuth project.

Acquisition of the Walker Ridge wide-azimuth data library survey. This survey covers 460 Gulf of Mexico lease blocks, and was acquired using four source vessels and a high-capacity 10-streamer vessel. The resulting data are shown below.

Walker Ridge Data Comparison: NAZ vs. WAZ
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Narrow Azimuth (NAZ)	Wide Azimuth (WAZ)
Data from the Walker Ridge wide-azimuth survey. Results from the survey in the targeted sub-salt bedding are particularly impressive. The quality and continuity of the sub-salt data in the example are a significant improvement over previous conventional narrow-azimuth seismic.

WAZ for Data Library

The current CGGVeritas wide-azimuth data library surveys have used multi-vessel operations with combinations of independent source vessels and streamer boats. The flexibility of the CGGVeritas fleet allows customized solutions on a project-by-project basis with the option of utilizing multiple high-capacity streamer vessels to record premium quality seismic data.

Acquisition Configurations

CGGVeritas has unrivalled experience in large-scale multi-vessel operations. We have now acquired thousands of square km of both proprietary and data library WAZ data in various configurations, as shown in the diagram on the right, without any HSE incidents.

Precessing Circles

We have also revisited the technique of shooting precessing circles (or coils), patented by Tensor and used by Digicon (now part of CGGVeritas) in the mid 1980s.

Modern acquisition, navigation and processing techniques alleviate many of the problems associated with historical attempts to use this geometry, but even with the superior noise performance of solid streamers, circular geometries lead to higher noise. While circular geometries do deliver a broad range of azimuths and offsets, the consistency or distribution of these in processing bins may not be acceptable without the use of proprietary tools like CGGVeritas’ market leading 5D interpolation algorithm REVIVE5D.

CGGVeritas has the unique combination of physical and intellectual assets required to design, plan, acquire and process towed streamer wide-azimuth surveys to address worldwide seismic imaging issues.