Reach Exploration is an oil and gas company primarily exploring prospects in onshore US. Historically, Reach has hired contractors to help it acquire new seismic surveys.
However, the team was keen to reduce costs and, following a recommendation from another of our clients, highlighting the ease of use, the data quality and the efficiencies that The STRYDE Nimble System™ unlocks, Reach approached STRYDE.
The company was interested in buying our portable nodal system, bringing a key part of seismic acquisition in-house, so we agreed to lease them a small-scale system so that they could carry out two onshore surveys in Seminole County, Oklahoma, USA.
The location is a mixture of scrubby farmland, creeks, occasional swamps and marginal woodland that partially overlapped the birthplace of land seismic.
The objective was to improve the company’s understanding of the local subsurface by conducting a small 3D seismic survey with restricted source acquisition and two dense 2D lines.
The whole 2,000 Node trial was impressively conducted in just 3 days with only two members.
Nodes Deployed
"The planning work we did with Reach is a great example of the complete service that STRYDE can offer smaller businesses – regardless of the industry they are working in – to get the most from their seismic systems. There are lots of benefits to working with STRYDE’s technology."
This was a deliberately small trial to demonstrate the impact and value of our technology, especially in areas where seismic source access was restricted. In total, a team of two, who until this trial had never performed a seismic survey, deployed 2,000 of our lightweight nodes over the course of 3 days. Crucially, this was achieved without costly and environmentally damaging line cutting and land clearance associated with more traditional seismic technologies.
We provided technical support throughout the project to help the team learn how to deploy, retrieve and harvest data from our nodes themselves. We also worked closely with Reach Exploration to help them plan their 3D seismic survey in detail, including positioning of receivers and source lines.
This was despite the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions in place during the scheduled survey, meaning we had to rely on remote support and training to ensure the team could keep their work on track.
That planning was particularly important given land access restrictions in some parts of the survey, due to private land ownership. This restricted acquisition to roads and tracks that didn’t require permitting or access to private lands.
Deploying more STRYDE Nodes™ in a dense pseudo-3D pattern allowed Reach to compensate for this and for areas that couldn’t be reached by the sources.
Because our nodes are completely independent, the team didn’t have to worry about collecting data in the field. Instead, they were able to concentrate on deploying and retrieving the nodes as quickly as possible and then downloading and processing the data back at their offices.
The Director of Reach Exploration says:
"There are lots of benefits to working with STRYDE’s technology. The nodes are incredibly portable and unintrusive. There’s also no complicated connection needed, which makes the whole process of deploying and retrieving the nodes effortless. And crucially for us it keeps our costs down. But most importantly, we are delighted with data we got back from this project."
The tests were successful, giving Reach data showing a new perspective and unseen prospectivity in the subsurface to be used in their oil and gas operations. STRYDE processed the data to create a 3D volume of the subsurface, giving Reach confidence in the final subsurface results. Based on this seismic acquisition dataset, Reach Exploration identified a new target, which following drilling in 2021 was found to have oil. Consequently, they have decided to buy our full system for their US operations, allowing them to perform rapid, cost-effective seismic surveys for oil and gas in the US on-demand.
We are particularly delighted at this result given that this was a team with no prior experience of seismic acquisition. Their success is a great demonstration of just how easy it is to use our technology. In fact, Reach told us that their vibroseis source contractor was stunned at how many nodes they had laid in a short space of time.
They also told us that our long-lasting battery proved essential since variable local weather patterns meant they had to stop work when it was too wet. Instead of having to collect and redeploy the nodes, they simply left them in the field until they were able to start work again.
Overall, this has been an incredibly successful project. We are delighted with the way our relationship with Reach has developed and that they have decided to buy the full system. We look forward to working with them in future