Paper Summary
Historically, velocity model building (VMB) in salt terrains has followed a layer stripping progression, where interpretation is confined to defining salt boundaries with the primary focus on defining the macro attributes for the post-salt, salt & pre-salt volumes. The imposition these horizons have on local and deeper imaging has generally been of lesser importance to the construction of the macro model, whilst the bulk of the interpretation effort has followed final imaging. This may result in subsequent ambiguity over the influence of the overburden model on the final interpretation. We propose an alternative flow where significant interpretation effort is involved at an early stage during the VMB process in order to assess the effect of the overburden model on the final image. This leads to the dual advantage of a progressive interpretation phase combined with increased confidence in the reliability of the final interpretation.