Paper Summary
The challenging combination of shallow water and shallow exploration targets in larger parts of the Barents Sea cannot be sufficiently addressed by the application of conventional marine seismic acquisition and imaging techniques. High resolution data, proper spatial sampling, as well as near offset/near angle information are key elements for imaging and quantitative interpretation. We first discuss several existing acquisition and imaging technologies that have been applied in the area, including standard towed streamer surveys, p-cable, and imaging with separated wavefields. We then introduce novel acquisition concepts. The innovative combination of high density seismic and wider towing of sources can be a cost-effective approach to acquire high quality seismic data with significantly improved near offset coverage and denser spatial sampling for shallow imaging. These configurations can be tuned such that both shallow and deeper targets are optimally imaged.