About this Research Topic
With the rapid developments of the global oil & gas industry in the past three decades, deep and ultra-deep hydrocarbon reservoirs gradually become an important exploration target. Except for the difference of buried depth from traditional shallow-to-middle reservoirs, deep and ultra-deep oil/gas reservoirs have specific hydrocarbon sources, accumulation mechanisms and sweet-spot distribution patterns. Seismic imaging is a powerful tool to detect subsurface hydrocarbon reservoirs, which can not only provide 3D subsurface structures of the impedance interfaces but can indicate rock and fluid properties. To date, there are a lot of oil and gas fields successfully detected by seismic imaging worldwide, such as in the Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, North Sea and West China. However, how to apply seismic imaging to study deep and ultra-deep oil/gas reservoirs is still challenging, because of the low signal-to-noise ratio of deep reflections, inaccurate velocity building and poor imaging quality.
The goal of this Research Topic is to tackle the frontier research and application issues for deep and ultra-deep oil/gas exploration using seismic techniques, toward a better understanding of deep and ultra-deep petroleum systems and balanced development of natural resources. To this end, we welcome manuscripts addressing all aspects of seismic methods for deep and ultra-deep hydrocarbon exploration, including novel preprocessing techniques to enhance the seismic data signal-to-noise ratio, robust velocity building methods using tomography and full-waveform inversion, seismic diffraction separation and imaging, advanced ray-based and wave-equation-based migration methodologies and case studies, practical least-squares migration strategies, as well as new understandings of the source types, and accumulation and preservation mechanisms for deep and ultra-deep petroleum system.
A variety of types of manuscripts will be considered: Original Research, Methods, Review, Technology and Code, and Perspective. The topics mainly include but are not limited to the following aspects:
• Advanced seismic preprocessing techniques for signal-to-noise ratio enhancement
• Robust velocity building techniques using travel-time tomography
• Novel full-wave inversion methods for deep & ultra-deep reservoirs
• Seismic diffraction separation and imaging methods
• Advanced ray-based seismic migration methods
• Practical least-squares migration methods for deep and ultra-deep reservoirs
• Seismic imaging techniques in attenuation and anisotropic media
• Hydrocarbon source and accumulation mechanisms for deep and ultra-deep petroleum system
Keywords: hydrocarbon reservoirs, seismic preprocessing techniques, robust velocity building techniques, full-wave inversion, seismic diffraction separation, accumulation mechanisms, ultra-deep petroleum system, CollectionSeries
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.