Progress of seismic exploration technology in offshore China

The exploration and development of oil and gas in China's offshore regions is marked by new challenges because targets are changing from shallow to deeper reservoirs and from structural to complex lithologic reservoirs.Increasing difficulty in exploration demands advanced seismic exploration technologies.Based on a comprehensive analysis of the challenges of deepwater oil and gas exploration, several new technological advancements are reviewed in this study.For seismic acquisition, high precision streamer acquisition equipment and the "plow" broadband seismic acquisition technology stand out.For seismic processing and interpretation, τ-p domain deghosting and reverse time migration technologies for broadband seismic data are investigated.For development seismology, marine time-lapse seismic technology, etc., are considered.In particular, breakthrough progress occurred in the fields of marine broadband seismic exploration technology and marine time-lapse seismic technology.Both play an important role in the exploration and production of oil and gas in the deepwater fields of the South China Sea, which is the main energy supplying region of China, and provide technical support for the growing exploration and production of offshore oil and gas reserves.