Abstract: Salt modeling challenges and strategies in Mississippi Canyon, Gulf of Mexico

Editor’s Note: As a preview to our March 2018 RECORDER featuring the focus topic: Salt & Subsalt Imaging in the Gulf of Mexico, we present the following abstract for one of the featured articles.

In Mississippi Canyon a unique characteristic of salt geometries are their stacking hourglass shapes (Figure 1) – autochthonous Louann salt forms the lower part, allochthonous Mesozoic salt forms the middle part, and Cenozoic salt canopy forms the shallow part. Due to this unique characteristic and the numerous overhangs common in the Cenozoic salt canopy, a piecewise salt modeling workflow with 4 salt bodies is typically followed for defining the salt bodies in this area. Salt body 1 and salt body 2 define the shallow Cenozoic salt canopy which commonly contains multiple overhangs. Salt body 3 defines the allochthonous Mesozoic salt and salt body 4 defines the autochthonous Louann Salt. In complex areas where the conventional salt modeling workflow is not sufficient to accurately capture the required details we add a local scenario workflow to the salt modeling workflow to properly define these complex details.

fig. 01 — Figure 1: A typical stacking hourglass shape salt in the Central Mississippi Canyon area. It includes three levels – the deep autochthonous Louann Salt, the midlevel allochthonous Mesozoic salt and the shallow Cenozoic salt canopy.

To view this full article, CSEG Members may access the March 2018 RECORDER issue here. If you are not a member this article will be released for public access in Fall 2018.

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Quincy Zhang joined TGS in 2006 and has been Interpretation Manager at TGS since 2011. He holds a B.S. degree in Oil and Gas Exploration from China University of Petroleum in 1997 and a M.S. degree in Geology from Colorado School of Mines in 2006. Before moving to USA in 2002 Quincy had worked as a geologist for exploration and development in China and the Caspian Sea. His current areas of interest are rift basin systems and presalt imaging/exploration on the Atlantic Margin and Gulf of Mexico Basin.

Cristina Reta-Tang is a Seismic Processing Manager at TGS with more than 20 years of experience in seismic processing. Her areas of interest are velocity model building and depth imaging in complex salt and subsalt areas. She holds a MS in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Memphis, Tennessee.

Gary Rodriguez graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. degree in Physics. He started his career in geophysics in 1984. He is currently employed at TGS, where he has served in various positions the past 12 years. In his current role of Chief Geophysicist, he provides technical support for depth imaging projects.

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