26th Jan, 2024

Unearthing India's energy wealth: taking onshore oil and gas exploration out of the dark ages

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The search for hydrocarbon resources has been an integral part of India's economic growth and energy landscape for decades. With a burgeoning population and a rapidly expanding industrial sector, the demand for energy and the importance that high-quality seismic data plays in enabling new energy sources has never been higher.

Over the past decades, onshore seismic data acquisition has faced numerous challenges that have hindered the ability to acquire the high-resolution seismic data required to make informed decisions related to oil field development and reservoir optimization.

issues range from significantly high seismic acquisition costs to greater HSE risk exposure, loss of equipment through theft, operational downtime, equipment failures, and complex data processing requirements, most of which can be attributed to the use of traditional heavy, complex, and expensive cabled geophone seismic recording devices which are commonly used in India to acquire seismic data.

In the last five years, onshore seismic sensors have undergone rapid modernization and enhancement whereby the cost, weight, and size have been dramatically reduced, and proven to be extremely reliable. These advancements have made onshore seismic survey challenges less prevalent - enabling the acquisition of high-density seismic data to be acquired faster and more cost-effectively than ever before, without any compromise to the final subsurface image quality.

node vs cables: onshore seismic sensors have undergone rapid modernization and enhancement

A proven phenomenon

The STRYDE Node™ is the smallest and most used nodal seismic sensor on the market today. It is a fully autonomous, cable-free seismic data recording device that has proven its capability by replacing cumbersome cabled geophone technology on over 150 onshore seismic projects in the last three years, across 14 different industries.

The STRYDE Node™ is the smallest and most used nodal seismic sensor on the market today

The STRYDE Node™ recently underwent a 2D seismic data acquisition test in Rajasthan, India, where 500 STRYDE Nodes™ were tested against a cabled geophone array. Each single STRYDE Node™ was placed alongside 12 bunched geophones using the same layout geometry and acquisition parameters. The output from STRYDE's nodal system was determined by the operator to be equally as good as the geophone-cabled system, the project also benefited from the following advantages:

  • 70% fewer crew members required to deploy sensors
  • 75% fewer vehicles required
  • 50% less time required to deploy sensors
  • 95% reduction in equipment weight

An improved way of working without cables restricting your productivity times.

  • Speed of deployment

As a rough guide, a client using STRYDE can deploy approximately one node every 15 to 30 seconds with a crew size of two to three people, which makes deploying large numbers of receivers extremely efficient. A recent example saw a crew deploy STRYDE Nodes™️ quickly, in a harsh desert terrain with 30 people using the support of less than 10 lightweight vehicles to deploy, retrieve, and rotate 10,000 nodes each day.

Direct benefits: Fewer personnel and support is required to deploy large amounts of receivers, ensuring faster and denser deployment in comparison to cables which take much longer to deploy due to the size and weight of the equipment. Overall, this allows clients to achieve higher productivity and project completion quicker.

Indirect benefits: Less crew on-site results in fewer emissions as people are no longer required to use lots of heavy vehicles to transport equipment. Moreover, having technology that is simple and easy to use presents opportunities for maximizing local employment.

  • Crew size and infrastructure

The time has finally come to wave farewell to large crews of line, survey, and maintenance teams and say hello to small and agile land seismic crews using nodes to acquire seismic data.

Direct benefits: Reducing crew sizes, leading to lower survey costs, less risk, and decreased environmental footprint and emissions involved in the acquisition process when compared to cabled systems. In addition, mobilization and demobilization times are significantly reduced as there is less equipment and crew to mobilize between locations, helping to save time and money. In addition, the size of the STRYDE Node™ enables it to be fully buried easily, thereby reducing the risk of theft, which is a very common problem when using cable systems.

To put this into context, one of our current customers based in Oman has been deploying 166,000 STRYDE Nodes™ and has recorded a 72% decrease in the size of the crew required compared to existing surveys.

Indirect benefits: The most important indirect benefits of reducing crew size are being able to operate with a low camp footprint and less intrusion. By keeping your camp small, you can better adapt to changing project requirements such as relocating, which involves laborious setup and dismantling of the camp, which is very useful in land seismic acquisition operations allowing greater flexibility in planning and agility.

  • Effective and efficient data processing

STRYDE’s systems are established to handle data harvesting and processing workflows for approximately one million channels with the ability to fast-track data processing within weeks or days of land seismic acquisition taking place.

Surveys using STRYDE technology are continuously increasing the trace density of seismic surveys with the technology breaking high-density seismic survey records with over 257 million traces / km2 acquired in a survey in Canada for CCUS exploration. This makes the visualisation and analysis of the subsurface more reliable to any industry wanting to understand the resources and risks below the Earth’s surface.

Direct benefits: Fast-tracking the results means that clients can use the subsurface information to accelerate decision-making.

Indirect benefits: Not only is decision-making accelerated, but having access to accurate and timely data can help team members identify and mitigate any potential subsurface risks.

Is simplicity the key?

Although moving to a more modern and efficient way of acquiring seismic data should seem like a no-brainer for many companies, it is not without hesitation due to the lack of real-time data transmission capabilities of autonomous nodes.

Whilst live data transmission for real-time seismic data QC is relevant for cable systems due to their frequent failures, caused by things like cable breaks, lightning events, field equipment damage, and 3rd party interferences, it is not a fundamental requirement for nodes that have far fewer points of failure and exceptionally high-reliability rates.

Furthermore, the STRYDE Nodes™ competitive pricing empowers companies to increase receiver density to an unprecedented level per square kilometre. This affordability enables companies to deploy a greater number of receivers, acquiring high-density seismic data at a significantly reduced cost when compared to conventional surveys, whilst providing new users with the data redundancy measure they want, in the unlikely event of recording failure.
Despite cabled systems offering the perceived 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 and often results in survey inefficiencies.

In cutting the equipment cost per channel by up to 50%, STRYDE has revolutionized the land seismic acquisition landscape. This method of seismic acquisition enables a better image of the subsurface to be acquired by increasing the spatial sampling in the field, accessing complex terrains previously restricted by cabled systems, and significantly reducing acquisition and processing project cycle time.

Learn more about STRYDE