Seismic exploration is a crucial early step in oil exploration.
Data are acquired from surface surveys, processed, and interpreted in order to understand the subsurface structure of a region. The duration of the processing for a 3D seismic survey can be measured in months, and datasets of over a terabyte are not uncommon. A sequence of processing steps are applied to the acquired data. After these steps have been completed, the original data volume is typically reduced by a factor of 60 or so. The next step is to apply an imaging process called seismic migration.