Oil Review Middle East – Issue 5, 2023
Over the past decades, land seismic acquisition has faced numerous challenges which have hindered the ability to deliver affordable and high-quality subsurface imaging. These issues range from significantly high acquisition costs to greater HSE risk exposure, high environmental footprint – associated with the use of heavy, complex, and expensive cabled geophone seismic recording devices - and complex data processing.
However, with the rapid advancements in seismic receiver technology whereby the cost, weight, and size have been dramatically reduced, these challenges are becoming less prevalent - enabling the acquisition of high-density seismic surveys and the use of advanced processing algorithms to deliver increased efficiency and affordability without any compromise to image quality.
In the quest for commercializing untapped resources, coupled with the steer towards more renewable energy, STRYDE, a global expert in onshore seismic acquisition technology and solutions, has experienced significant demands for its cable-less nodal technology and fast-track data processing services across the oil and gas, geothermal, mining, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) and civil engineering industries due to the systems unique ability to reduce seismic data acquisition time and cost.
Enabling agile, flexible, and efficient seismic operations
Traditional cable systems used for seismic surveys are costly to deploy and can be particularly inefficient in challenging Middle East terrains. They also require extensive line preparation and surveying ahead of equipment deployment which is costly and time-consuming.
By introducing the capability to conduct mobile surveying using Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) in the receiver and source point positioning, you can reduce or even remove the necessity to conduct pre-acquisition line surveying. The world of stakeless land seismic surveys is becoming the norm and has become ingrained in the way crews deploy cable-less receiver technology like STRYDE’s miniature nodes. This significantly reduces the personnel and vehicles required and naturally directly reduces HSE risk exposure while delivering a reduced carbon and environmental footprint.
STRYDE Nodes™️ were recently deployed for a client in a challenging desert environment. This type of environment would usually have created significant challenges for cable systems due to their hefty size and weight, but due to their small, lightweight properties, an impressive 10,000 nodes were deployed, retrieved, and rotated each day, utilizing just 30 crew members and less than 10 lightweight vehicles.
By utilizing a smaller, agile crew, operators can now be more flexible and efficient than ever before, allowing access to subsurface insights far quicker than ever experienced on previous surveys.
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Higher productivity and data quality, with less cost
Equipment damage, which is notorious with cabled systems where breaks in cables or theft occur frequently, can cause unplanned downtime and additional costs through laborious investigation and replacement in the field to avoid data loss.
Despite cabled systems offering the benefit of real-time data quality control, the sheer mass of equipment and the burden placed on technology and crew members to prepare lines, deploy receivers, record, and review, real-time data is immense often resulting in source acquisition inefficiencies.
In cutting the equipment cost per channel by up to 50%, STRYDE Nodes™️ have revolutionized the land seismic acquisition landscape by enabling operators to conduct high-density seismic surveys for less than the traditional ‘sparse’ surveys that were controlled by cable systems or bulky nodal devices. This method provides more data redundancy should data accessibility be compromised in the rare occasion of node loss, a better image of the subsurface by increasing the spatial sampling in the field, accessing complex terrains previously restricted by bulky systems, and significantly reduced acquisition and processing project cycle time.
Exploration for new resources and better mapping of production of existing resources will continue to require high-resolution seismic imaging and nodal technology is, without a doubt, the next evolution in making subsurface exploration more accessible to de-risk decision-making.