A cableless to acquiring hi-res seismic data

ONSHORE SEISMIC SURVEYS, utilising STRYDE’s cableless receiver technology and the company’s fasttrack data processing services, deliver high-resolution images of the subsurface, faster than ever before and at a significantly reduced price point. This is providing operators in the Middle East with the lynchpin to delivering the mega surveys of the future required to map the subsurface and fuel the growing demand for energy.

Traditionally, within the Middle Eastern oil and gas market, seismic data has been acquired using cable-based recording systems with strings of analog geophones. Cabled telemetry systems with analog geophone arrays are notoriously complex, expensive, and heavy to deploy, operate and maintain. The density of the receiver sampling is limited due to constraints caused by difficulties in moving (rolling) large amounts of channels due to excessive weight and telemetry failures causing lost time. Due to these legacy issues, cabled telemetry systems with analog geophone arrays are often operated with receiver intervals of 50m.

The excessive weight and bulkiness of cabled telemetry systems with geophone arrays has been proven to impact the operational efficiency and costs of the seismic acquisition in the following ways:

• Increased crew/project operating costs due to the increased number of people required to deploy, move, and retrieve cabled systems with geophone strings

• Increased technical downtime due to cable telemetry errors and limitations food, water, generators, etc)

• Additional and unnecessary exposure to health and safety risks associated with more vehicles and people carrying heavy objects.

• Higher equipment costs

• Significant maintenance costs to fix and maintain the huge amount of copper and fibre optic cables deployed in the field

• Many more heavy vehicles are required to transport the equipment and people

• Additional logistical equipment and services to support a large crew (accommodation,

By comparison, STRYDE’s cableless seismic sensor system is lightweight, significantly lower-priced and agile, enabling high-density, large-scale seismic surveys to be a viable option for oil and gas operators in the Middle East. With over 400,000 STRYDE Nodes being used in the Middle East over the last two years, it has been proven to enable the seismic contractors to take advantage of vastly improved survey operational efficiencies, lower crew operating costs with fewer logistical constraints, while minimising exposure to HSE risks. The end clients can benefit from using the STRYDE system with higher-resolution imaging of the subsurface at reduced cost.

There is no doubt that nodes are the future for land seismic, and the use of this technology is a critical success factor in delivering value to end users of the data, in a more efficient and cost-effective way than ever before. n