Reducing the Environmental Impact of Seismic Acquisition While Improving Operational Efficiency by Incorporating New Technologies

Abstract

Abstract Three R&D initiatives in seismic data acquisition are presented focusing on the reduction of environmental footprint while reducing the operational cost and increasing the efficiency in offshore field operations. The first initiative is the development of a new seismic sensor that can remain on the seafloor for up to five years, the On Demand Ocean Bottom Node - OD OBN (Lopez et al., 2023), helping to decrease the cost of seismic monitoring surveys. The second initiative is a new type of seismic source with lower environmental impact, the Marine Vibrator, which improves the usage of the available energy of the seismic source within the most useful frequency band for seismic acquisition, suppressing higher frequencies potentially harmful for marine mammals (Wartzok and Ketten, 1999). The third initiative is a pilot 3D seismic acquisition in deep-offshore Brazil using fiber optic cables, originally installed on the seafloor as part of a Permanent Reservoir Monitoring (PRM) system, which will be interrogated using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) while recording shots from a seismic streamer vessel present in the area. It is expected that the 3D seismic data acquired in this manner will offer a good understanding of the potential for DAS application for seismic data acquisition using fibers laid on the seafloor, considering the fiber's limitations in sensitivity and angular response. In addition to conventional applications for reservoir monitoring, these technologies are promising for applications linked to the energy transition, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects, where the expected low commercial value of the sequestered CO2 requires low-cost monitoring methods to be affordable.