This past year has seen many refinements in the technologies that debuted in the first decade of this century. Seismic acquisition, processing, and interpretation technologies continue to improve, and new and better methods of well logging and testing are helping to give operators the best information possible about their wells.

Acquisition

CGG achieved acquisition milestones this year during surveys in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Using its StagSeis survey configuration, the company deployed the longest offsets in the industry for a full-azimuth multivessel survey, using 18-km (11-mile) offsets. Its Geo Caribbean, meanwhile, claimed the title of the largest manmade moving object with its 13.4-sq-km (5.2-sq-mile) towing configuration.

CGG also launched MULTIPULSE, a near-surface and deep-penetrating electromagnetic (EM) survey technique that increases resolution and bandwidth. The technology combines the benefits of CGG’s airborne time-domain EM products by offering both a high-power pulse for depth of exploration and a lower power pulse for near-surface imaging.

ION Geophysical launched its Narwhal system for integrated ice management services. The solution provides visualization, analysis, tracking, prediction, monitoring, and risk mitigation tools to address arctic seismic acquisition operations.

WesternGeco is pushing the boundaries of full waveform inversion (FWI) in the marine environment by using synthetic data along with a real GoM dual-coil shooting acquisition dataset with offsets up to 14.3 km (8.8 miles) and full-azimuth distribution. Results indicate that FWI can be used in the processing sequence due to the long offsets and low frequencies provided by this method.

PGS unveiled its latest Ramform, the Titan, equipped with 24 streamer reels. It includes safety features like increased working and storage space, stable capacity for more than 6,000 tons of fuel and seismic equipment, an automated back deck, two stern-launched workboats, and two 40-person lifeboats with a scoop rescue system. The vessel also includes an upgraded GeoStreamer-based seismic package as well as amenities including a 225-sq-m (2,422-sq-ft) sports hall, gym, theaters, TV and game rooms, 60 single cabins, and 10 twin cabins.

For land acquisition, Sercel launched its new 508land seismic acquisition system, offering crews the ability to record up to 1 million channels. The system combines cabled and wireless technologies. Inova Geophysical launched its AccuSeis SL11 single-component broadband digital sensor to provide higher resolution. AccuSeis is, according to the company, the lightest, smallest, and most durable digital sensor in the industry.

Processing

TGS introduced Clari-Fi, a broadband processing solution that addresses the ghost and earth-filtering effects of marine seismic data. The solution works by computing an inverse operator to deconvolve the ghosts from conventional streamer data.

CGG started the reimaging of its entire Cornerstone multiclient dataset, creating a 35,000-sq-km (13,500-sqmile) contiguous broadband prestack depth-migrated volume in the central North Sea. The existing dataset is being reprocessed with a deghosting technique, which will produce an extended-bandwidth dataset complementing its BroadSeis acquisition technology. The company will use TomoML, its multilayer tomography, as part of the reprocessing.

PGS is reprocessing its Crystal I and II wide-azimuth programs in the deepwater GoM. Techniques including improved designature/debubble, bandwidth extension, tilted transverse isotropy velocity model building, PGS’s hyperTomo tomography platform, and anisotropic prestack depth migration with reverse time migration (RTM) will be used in the project.

One new processing method introduced by Arcis Seismic Solutions, TGS, involves preconditioning of seismic data by not only removing spatial noise and enhancing the coherency and alignment of reflection events but also by regularizing the missing offsets and azimuths in the prestack stage. Arcis claims that this approach results in more balanced stacked data and yields more confident attribute displays that lack artifacts.

Data storage and management are always big issues with seismic data, and NVIDIA, NetApp, Cisco, and Citrix have created a data center solution to support better geological and geophysical applications by collocating data in a centralized flexible cloud-based architecture. The companies have created the Private Cloud based on FlexPod, a computing, networking, and storage solution platform developed by Cisco and NetApp. Additionally, NetApp has joined forces with Landmark Software and Services and Terascala to bring to market a high-throughput processing storage architecture called the Landmark Accelerated Processing Architecture. This provides more throughput, performance, and supportability for Landmark’s SeisSpace ProMAX software, NetApp’s E-Series storage systems, and Terascala’s TeraOS.

Interpretation

Objects that have passed through the same seismic trace twice are considered to have multiple Z points for the same X and Y points. A new suite of functionality in Schlumberger’s Petrel 2013 release helps interpreters model salt more accurately by accounting for these multiple points. This interpretation process allows more accurate salt imaging that wraps a triangulated “mesh” around the salt body.

Petrel 2013 also introduced a volume-based modeling system to support precise representation of complex geology, enhanced rendering to illuminate geobodies, and geomechanical reconstruction to validate interpretation in complex depositional environments.

ARKeX, which acquires potential fields data, has introduced a new modeling and interpretation tool that better integrates these data with seismic and other geophysical data. XFIELD allows users to create 2-D/ 2.5-D models in either time or depth and integrate all datasets, including gravity, magnetics, gravity gradiometry, 2-D seismic, 3-D seismic, well log data, geological horizons, and topography.

The Kingdom Illuminator platform from IHS is relying on technology based on studies of the neuronal circuits in the human brain modeling the way people perceive orientation patterns. The platform enables new methods of estimating volumetric dip and azimuth attributes, even in low signal-to-noise data and complex geological conditions.

A new workflow for fault interpretation has been developed by dGB in partnership with Bo Zhang from the University of Oklahoma and Michael Pelissier with Roc Oil (Bohai) Co. The workflow performs semiautomated fault illumination using a discontinuity attribute as input. The output is fault patterns. The algorithm calculates the local maximum curvature in cross-sectional profiles of discontinuity on time slices to extract the center lines of possible fault locations.

Jason, a CGG company, introduced the 3-D Interpretation application complementing its current quantitative analysis and risk reduction techniques. The new application makes it easy for teams to build, refine, and complete structural, stratigraphic, and rock property models within one environment.

dGB has added dip-steered gridding to its suite of open-source seismic interpretation software. This approach takes the seismic dip and azimuth information at all known and unknown sample positions within a given radius and grids a horizon by following the dip azimuth. It generates few artifacts and does not rely on initial models.

Landmark claims to have developed the industry’s first complete depth interpretation workflow on a single software platform. The platform relies on a multi-domain E&P data management system that tracks data objects created in seismic time, seismic depth, or geological depth and manages time-depth and depth-depth relationships. The workflow includes calibration of seismic data with well log data in depth, which in turn enables the creation of a dynamic 3-D structural framework in depth. It also incorporates structural geology and 3-D reconstruction technology to refine complex depth interpretations.

Logging, coring, and well testing

Halliburton introduced Dash, an emergency response module for use in deep-water and ultra-deepwater exploration and appraisal well testing. The system sends an electrical signal through the umbilical to a dual-redundant solenoid valve. This valve isolates the umbilical from the surface and releases a lock so that hydrostatic fluid from the riser pressurizes a chamber. This delivers pressurized fluid to the functions of the subsea safety system. The safety tree balls and the retainer valve close, and a vent sleeve opens prior to the subsea safety tree latch disconnecting. Then the upper section of the landing string moves through the drilling BOP stack and clears the disconnect point.

The system is engineered to ensure that an electrical failure can’t compromise safety or functionality.

Halliburton also introduced its Integrated Computational Element (ICE Core) fluid analysis service. Previously, optical analyzers could tell an operator when a sample was pure enough to collect, but rarely could they identify which fluid components were present and in what proportions, according to a Halliburton press release. ICE Core fluid analysis technology, which is a component of Halliburton’s Reservoir Description Tool, delivers this information, the company said. The new technology is well suited for downhole fluid analysis including applications in deep water, exploration, sample validation, fluid analysis between samples, where flow assurance is an issue, when mapping water floods, when determining reservoir connectivity, when determining compositional grading of reservoir fluids, and to see if fluids are changing. The fluid analysis technology works via light shining through downhole fluids and then through ICE Core sensors. Each sensor is programmed to recognize the chemical nature – or optical fingerprint – of a specific fluid component such as methane, ethane, propane, aromatics, saturates, or water. Measuring the intensity of light passing through any one sensor indicates the presence and proportion of a particular chemical component within the overall fluid. Because the technology relies on photometric detection instead of spectroscopy, it does not require a computer to perform calculations on an optical spectrum. Each sensor is designed to respond specifically to the fingerprint of the selected analyte using all of the information in the optical spectrum.

Corpro’s Thin Sleeve System (TSS) Core Barrel is a 6-m (20-ft) ultra-stable system that delivers better core quality and smoother coring operations than the conventional 9-m (30-ft) systems, according to the company. It accomplishes this via two independent inner tubes that protect the core during the cutting process. The tubes also allow the recovery to take place without transmitting any stress to the core. The tool’s barrel is composed of steel with aluminum liners that strengthen and stiffen the coring system. It does not degrade or stretch, even in HP/HT hydrogen sulfide wells, according to the company. Also, conventional methods of describing the core called for it to be cut into 1-m (3-ft) sections, packaged, and shipped to shore before geologists working offshore could view and assess the conditions. The Half-Moon On-Ice liners that the TSS system uses enable geologists to lift the top half of the aluminum and describe the core at the well site.

Greenland says development must meet its national interests

Cooperation among companies offshore could have benefits for the bottom line, the environment, and the country’s future.

By Hans Christian Krarup, Golder Associates

Cooperation seems to be a key theme for companies operating offshore Greenland. One reason for this is that the extent of the resource has been barely probed, so companies involved in early-stage or frontier exploration have to think in a bit more unorthodox way. Some of the cooperation can be motivated by managing their financial exposure by the industry’s tradition of joint ventures. In other circumstances it is motivated by the wish to minimize the impact on local communities.

An example of this is the Social Baseline Study that Golder Associates, in partnership with Greenlandic consultancy Inuplan, carried out for Maersk Oil Kalaallit Nunaat A/S, Cairn Energy Plc, ConocoPhillips, and Shell Greenland for their planned exploration activities in northwest Greenland. By conducting a joint study, the impact on the involved communities and stakeholders will be kept at a minimum compared to a situation where each company would have conducted its own stakeholder meetings and other such steps.

Another reason to cooperate is the country’s location; it is remote from the nearest established infrastructure, so companies may find it economical to share equipment, particularly in emergency and spill response. By having companies obligated to back each other up, these companies can increase the quality of the response resources as well as provide a broader range of solutions.

This is particularly acute given Greenland’s concern about resource activity harming the fishing sector, which forms the country’s main source of income.

The current legislation that requires a dual-rig policy means that each oil company would need two drilling rigs for drilling an exploration well. If a company is only planning to drill a single well, it will be expensive to have an idle rig standing as backup. However, without an extra rig, it would be difficult to drill a relief well in the same drilling season in an actual or threatened blowout since getting another drillship on site might take weeks. A relevant solution could be that two oil companies mutually are committed to immediately suspending their own operations if there is an emergency need to drill a relief well.

The national election in March 2013 that saw Aleqa Hammond’s Siumut Party come to power signals that some things in Greenland can be altered by the political winds of change.

Some understanding of Greenland’s history will help oil and gas companies understand how their work may fit into the island’s future. Long ruled by Denmark, Greenland was granted home rule in 1979 by the Danish parliament. In 2009, the Act on Greenland Self-Government gave Greenland greater responsibility for internal affairs.

Denmark controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, security, and financial policy in consultation with Greenland’s home rule government. Denmark also continues to provide about half of Greenland’s income in the form of a subsidy. The other main source of the country’s income comes from fisheries, with some income from tourism and mining.

Underlining the new government’s concern that any resource development must be done in a way that benefits Greenland, there are worries that resource activity may cause problems for fisheries and for traditional hunting and fishing activities. This is balanced by Greenland’s desire to chart its own course. At the October 2013 Arctic Circle conference in Iceland, Hammond voiced her hope that Greenland will be independent within her lifetime. This opinion is not necessarily shared by all other Green-landers, but there generally is a strong desire for Greenland to determine its own future.

Being independent means cutting the financial strings to Denmark, and to support the island’s 57,000 people, other sources of income are needed. The most promising candidates are mining and oil and gas.

However, exploiting the country’s natural resources with the current work force will be difficult, so the Greenland government formed the Greenland School of Minerals and Petroleum in 2008.

So far the different stakeholders in Greenland have focused on requiring international resource companies to involve local companies in their projects rather than focusing on employment of Greenland citizens. The regulatory environment in Greenland as it pertains to resources is still in development. While this poses some uncertainties, it also has some advantages for resource companies in that there is room for discussion with government entities.