Abstract

Keeping up with the country’s rising energy demands and the challenge of reducing country’s dependency on foreign imports, the National Oil Companys are heavily invested in the exploration of fold thrust belt areas. The region is seismically unfriendly and poses a significant challenge to acquisition and processing geophysicists alike. Despite the significant advancements in acquisition and processing technology, conventional processing workflows cannot be applied in such areas as they fail to properly image the structurally complex fold thrust belt under the subsurface. Processing of 2D seismic data has its own limitations such as poor signal-to-noise ratio, low resolution, zero crossline foldage, coherent noise, etc., owing to sparse spatial sampling, poor model building among other factors. The 2D seismic lines are laid out around the Khubal and Machhlithum lineament. The paper showcases the usage of a hybrid approach, leveraging imaging techniques including geometry corrections, nonlinear tomography-based statics solutions, velocity estimation using horizonbased velocity modeling aided by the Constant Velocity Stacks method, to address the inherent challenges and improve upon the processed image.