GX Technology to use Luminus 3-D plane-wave prestack depth migration for imaging in the marine environment

APRIL 16--GX Technology (GXT; Houston, TX; www.gxt.com) and Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP; www.ifp.fr) have entered into an exclusive worldwide agreement in which GXT will offer seismic depth-imaging services using IFP patented Luminus software--shot-based 3-D plane-wave prestack depth migration, which offers benefits when imaging complex subsurface structures in the marine environment, especially beneath salt. IFP is a European independent center for research and industrial development, education and training, and information in the field of oil, natural gas, and automobiles.

Luminus is a full-volume, full-aperture depth migration, requiring no decimation of input data. This can result in an improvement in the quality of steep dips and the signal-to-noise ratio. Luminus joins with GXT's other advanced imaging technologies--Optimus for shot record wave equation PSDM, Primus for amplitude-preserving Kirchhoff PSDM, and PrimeTime for curved ray prestack time migration--to provide GX Technology's clients with a broad selection of advanced depth-imaging solutions.

Nick Bernitsas, GTX senior vice president for US operations, said, "One of our technical teams has been working with the IFP developers over the past few months to install, test, and run Luminus on GXT's supercomputing cluster in Houston. Even though we have obtained excellent results using Luminus on production projects, we are continuing to aggressively develop its capabilities."