Abstract

The KG Basin in the East coast of India is a passive margin basin which belongs to a unique poly cyclic extensional province. Geologically the basin exhibits a very complex sub-surface picture, especially in the west Godavari sub-basin area. The subsurface imaging becomes a challenge because of the thick basaltic layer at the shallow level in this part of the basin. The basaltic layer varies in thickness from 50 m to 160 m with depth of 500 m to 1500 m in this part of the basin. Many 2-D, 3-D and a long offset seismic campaigns were conducted in this area. But clear & unique picture of the sub-surface, comprising of the basement, basement related faults, thin lenticular sands within the older sediments below the basalts etc., could not be seen so far. A model based approach was attempted to optimize some of the parameters like far offset requirement, type of shooting geometry etc. to facilitate better imaging of the sub-surface.