Business news for the week of 27 October 2011 News section front Past news briefs Seismic crew survey reports

CGGVeritas announces Oceanic Sirius new-build to acquire 3D BroadSeis survey on Avaldsnes Field

27 October 2011—CGGVeritas announced that the first project for its recently launched Oceanic Sirius X-BOW seismic vessel will be a 3D BroadSeis survey on the Avaldsnes Field, potentially the third largest oil discovery in Norway, on behalf of Lundin Petroleum. 

BroadSeis, the new CGGVeritas broadband marine solution, was selected to improve the resolution and imaging of the field. The vessel will acquireBroadSeis data with Sercel Sentinel solid streamers equipped with the Sercel Nautilus streamer control device. DoveTail, a proprietary CGGVeritas acquisition and processing solution designed to achieve more regular sampling and to reduce infill, will also be deployed on this project.

 

WellDog and tQ Automation sign MOU to bring coalbed methane technical services to Indonesia

27 October 2011—WellDog and tQ Automation have signed a memorandum of understanding under which tQ Automation will support introduction of WellDog's suite of technical services to the fast-growing coalbed methane (CBM) market in Indonesia.
  
The MOU covers all of WellDog's business lines, including its preproduction gas testing services, its pressure monitoring sales and installation services, its new permeability testing services, and its reservoir engineering services, as well as its business line based around a sustainably-focused downhole water/gas separation and re-injection technology.
  
tQ Automation acts as a well optimization consultant and technology transfer agent for a number of oil and gas service companies in Indonesia. They are currently serving customers in CBM and traditional oil and gas projects throughout Indonesia. tQ Automation also operates locally in Jakarta via its Indonesian subsidiary, PT. Lintas Masa.

 

 Octio assesses CO₂ monitoring for CLIMIT

 27 October 2011—Octio will do a pilot project to assess the permanent monitoring of CO₂ stor­­age under the seabed for CLIMIT. CLIMIT is a program to encourage commercial development of technology for capturing and storing CO₂; administered jointly by Gassnova and the Norwegian Research Council. When CO₂ is stored under the seabed, it is essential to have a secure system for the identification of possible leakage before accidents happen. Traditionally, monitoring of CO₂ injection into the seabed has been done with seismic shooting from ships. However, permanent seismic monitoring is more and more commonly used for various subsea surveillance tasks, such as monitoring of oil and gas injector wells.

An assumption is that monitoring of CO₂ storage under the seabed can be done more effectively and less expensively by permanent monitoring. With traditional seismic shooting, there are long intervals between repeat surveys. With permanent monitoring, changes are identified immediately. The purpose of Octio's project is to verify a cost-effective system for subsea CO₂ storage combining permanent monitoring of the seabed with other forms of environmental monitoring of the sea in a complete warning system.

Octio has a proprietary technology for permanent monitoring of the seabed. The tasks are solved with seismic nodes placed on the seabed in the actual area. These will send data about changes in the seabed continuously to a surface vessel, platform, or onshore. These signals are combined with other input from oceanographic and environmental monitoring so that those responsible have a good picture of suspicious changes in the seabed or the environment. Octio collaborates with leading players in these areas to provide a virtually complete picture. Octio will conduct the study in 2012.

 

Expro announces multimillion dollar contract win with ENI in Iraq

27 October 2011—Expro has recently secured a contract in the Middle East with Eni Iraq BV, lead contractor of the Zubair Consortium. The contract, providing chemical analysis laboratory work, for the Zubair Field in Southern Iraq, represents Expro's first direct contract in Iraq.

Running for three years with a possible two-year extension and worth of US $12.5 million, it also serves to enhance its relationship in the Middle East /North Africa region.

The Zubair Field is one of the largest discovered oilfields in the world and the Zubair Consortium has extensive plans going forward to rehabilitate and upgrade existing wells in the region while also drilling new wells from 2011–2012.

 

ION expands ArcticSPAN regional seismic program

31 October 2011—ION Geophysical Corporation has acquired an additional 5200 km of regional seismic data offshore Northeast Greenland, bringing the total kilometers the company has acquired in the region over the last two seasons to nearly 18,000. The Arctic is one of the least explored, most prospective regions in the world, containing an estimated one-quarter of the Earth's undiscovered hydrocarbons, including an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The successful acquisition, during an extremely challenging ice year, was further validation of the company's proprietary, purpose-designed marine streamer technology that enables data acquisition in the presence of ice. This technology enabled the company to acquire data further north and in the presence of heavier ice than had been previously possible, at the same time mitigating HSE risk and reducing cycle time.

In addition to its Northeast Greenland survey, ION was also engaged during the summer season in the 2011 Arctic Expedition at the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Russian Federation. The survey was performed by order of the Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency, under the guidance of the State Research Navigation and Hydrographic Institute, in support of submission of Russia to the U.N. for extension of the limits of the continental shelf. Seismic data (approximately 6000 km) were acquired over 57 days, culminating in the acquisition of data at a distance of less than 300 km of the North Pole.

 

Australia's Linc Energy explores cable-free potential

31 October 2011—Linc Energy has purchased a complete FairfieldNodal ZLand system and rented additional stations for its UCG exploration in Alaska, Wyoming, and Australia. This marks the first time any nodal system has been used in this area of exploration.

The recommendation to use the ZLand system came from SAExploration, a seismic services company in Anchorage, Alaska, already familiar with FairfieldNodal's true cable-free ZLand nodes.

 

Furgo Robertson's RoqSCAN field tests successful in Wolfcamp shale

1 November 2011—Fugro Robertson's portable rock properties analyzer, RoqSCAN, recently completed field tests on Forest Oil Corporation's Shannon Estate lease in Crockett County, Texas.

Both a vertical pilot well and horizontal well were drilled successfully and key formations of the Permian Basin—from the Clearfork Formation to the Ellenburger Formation and focusing on the Wolfcamp Shale Formation—were sampled and analyzed.

The portable RoqSCAN system analyzes wellbore cuttings and core piece samples in high resolution and generates fully intuitive, highly quantitative mineralogical and textural data sets within one hour of cuttings. The data are captured and displayed in the form of a downhole log.

RoqSCAN is a collaborative effort between the first company to introduce automated and quantitative mineralogy to the oil and gas industry, Fugro Robertson; and the world's first manufacturer of portable scanning electronic microscope (SEM) solutions, Carl Zeiss. 

 

Z-Terra launches 3D Kirchhoff depth & time migration

1 November 2011—Z-Terra, a provider of depth imaging software and services for oil and gas exploration, has launched ZTK version 2.0, the company's implementation of the three-dimensional Kirchhoff depth and time migration for seismic imaging. 

ZTK images seismic data by solving the wave equation with a boundary integral method. The acoustic reflectivity at every point of the Earth's interior is computed by summing the recorded data on multidimensional surfaces; the shape of the summation surfaces and the summation weights are computed from the Green's functions of the single scattering wave propagation experiment. 

 

Dolphin exercises option to charter, M/V Polar Duchess

Dolphin Group ASA has formally exercised its option and will charter M/V Polar Duchess from Armada Seismic ASA for an initial period of three years. Dolphin can further extend the charter by one extension period of eight years, or two extension periods of four years each. The M/V Polar Duchess is expected to be taken on full charter in early April 2012.

M/V Polar Duchess is a modern high-capacity 3D seismic vessel, with a towing capacity of 14 seismic cables and has been designed with strong focus on safety, optimized towing, and a maximum speed of 20 knots. Polar Duchess will be a sister ship to Polar Duke, which was launched in May 2011. The new Vessel is part of Dolphin's original company expansion plan.

Dolphin will be responsible for the seismic equipment investment of approximately US $55 million and the technical seismic design and outfitting, which will be performed during the first quarter of 2012.