Removing Multiples And Imaging And Inverting Primaries Beneath a Complex Ill-defined Overburden: Defining And Addressing the Pressing Seismic Challenge Available to Purchase

An outstanding seismic exploration challenge faced by the petroleum industry is the inability to effectively image and invert seismic data for potential hydrocarbon targets beneath highly complex heterogeneous, rapidly varying, media and/or beneath a rapidly varying and corrugated boundary. The inverse scattering task specific subseries method represents a direct and comprehensive response to that challenge, with its delivered promise of the most inclusive and effective set of multiple removal algorithms; and, the ongoing development of algorithms that directly depth image and invert primaries without knowing or determining any subsurface information, whatsoever. In this paper, we first describe the pressing seismic challenge, and then present an overview and update of the direct response of the inverse scattering series to that set of outstanding significant problems. We describe and exemplify the evolution of concepts, algorithms, and recent progress; and, we discuss plans and open issues.