Houston-based Apache Corp. has become the first producer to use true-cable free wireless seismic technology offshore Alaska to limit the impact of seismic activity on Cook Inlet’s wildlife, communities and environment – including Cook Inlet beluga whales.

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The use of wireless 3-D seismic is part of Apache’s commitment to conducting 3-D seismic operations in Alaska’s Cook Inlet “in ways that limit the impact on communities and the environment,” the company said in a July 24 article on its website, addressing criticisms of its seismic program.

Apache is using true cable-free nodal recording systems, designed and manufactured by Sugar Land, Texas-based FairfieldNodal, in order to minimize the impact of its seismic survey on Cook Inlet’s wildlife population and environment.

“Because we’re shooting onshore and offshore, we have to go back and meld and blend the data for the different sections together,” said Lisa Parker.

The company is using the technology for its ongoing 3D seismic survey of Cook Inlet, which will encompass onshore, offshore and the transition zone of Apache’s acreage. The seismic survey will continue for the next two and a half years.

After acquiring leases on 850,000 acres in Cook Inlet in August 2010, Apache began the permitting process for its seismic and exploration programs. In an effort to address concerns over the impact of seismic activity on local wildlife and the environment, Apache conducted a technology test to compare how traditional cable seismic would perform versus a wireless system.

Impressed with what it saw, the company initiated the permitting process to utilize wireless seismic and received approval to use this technology in the spring of 2011.
Apache began its Cook Inlet seismic program in November 2011, and has been working continuously since then, save for a six-week break from Christmas through the first part of February.

Approximately 1.4 billion barrels of oil was discovered in Cook Inlet in its early development in the 1950s and 1960s. Exploration and production in Cook Inlet declined after the discovery of Prudhoe Bay. Only a handful of fields have been discovered in Cook Inlet, but the field size distribution strongly suggests another 1.3 to 1.4 billion barrels of oil remain to be discovered in the Cook Inlet basin, Apache said.

Apache will begin drilling in Cook Inlet in October.

Fairfield’s product is truly cable free, unlike nodes from manufacturers who have elected to keep the power supply, electronics and sensor connected with short cables and connectors, said Roger Keyte head of marketing and business development at FairfieldNodal.

The nodes are placed on the ocean floor or buried onshore. Except for a rope tied to nodes placed offshore to retrieve them – the rope is not involved in the spacing of the node – the nodes have no cables, said Keyte.

Marine nodes weigh 65 pounds and look like a 50-pound free weight, but are a bit thicker, said Lisa Parker, head of government relations for Apache in Alaska. Land nodes weigh 4.8 pounds and look like a two-pound coffee can with a spike on the bottom. Both types of nodes are made of plastic and stainless steel.

The nodes are retrieved after a period time and taken back to the office, where the data is downloaded and the nodes are recharged. The data is then forwarded to Apache’s geoscientists for interpretation.

“Because we’re shooting onshore and offshore, we have to go back and meld and blend the data for the different sections together,” said Lisa Parker, head of government relations for Apache in Alaska. “It’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle back together.”

Since 1924, traditional seismic systems have involved sensors connected to cables. These sensors transmitted signals back to a localized recording system to be converted into digits, said Keyte.

Using a system with heavy, cumbersome cables presents difficulties onshore and offshore, Keyte noted. Offshore, the cables mean seismic vessels can’t get close to structures in the water such as rigs and platforms. Traditional systems also tend to be noisier.

Using cabled system onshore was especially problematic, with electrical leakages occurring due to animals biting or chewing the cables or sweat from the hands of workers, said Keyte.

Utilizing a true cable-free system cuts down on the amount of time crews spend troubleshooting to fix leakages. The cable free system increases the reliability of data and allows the recording time to be controlled.

More details…

CARMELA BURNS on JULY 19, 2012

“The recent rush to find graphite and vanadium deposits to satisfy potential demand in green energy applications is reigniting airborne electromagnetic (EM) methods as highly effective exploration tools.”

read more..

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A tool used by mining companies to find mineral ores has been adapted to map frozen soils below the ground in Alaska and could be used to track the effects of global warming, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The agency announced Monday that an airborne survey conducted in Alaska’s Yukon River drainage collected unprecedented images of the presence and absence of permafrost down to 328 feet. The study used an electromagnetic survey tool flown beneath a helicopter.

“We really think we’ve got the story nailed down from these data,” research geophysicist Burke Minsley said by phone from the Crustal Geophysics and Geochemistry Science Center in Denver.

Minsley is lead author of the study published Friday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050079.shtml).

Mapping permafrost extents has been done by satellite, Minsley said.

“It’s hard to get any information at depth, and that’s what’s unique here,” he said.

Permafrost is below about 24 percent of the land area in North America. The research will be important for climate scientists looking at the thawing of permafrost as a greenhouse gas contributor, studying ecology in lake systems, or looking at the effects of thawing ground on river chemistry, Minsley said. Thawing also will bring important impacts for northern infrastructure such as buildings and roads.

The Yukon River begins in Yukon Territory, Canada, and spans Alaska from east to west.

The research team surveyed more than 116 square miles of the Yukon Flats in an area centered 140 miles northeast of Fairbanks. The area was picked in part because it’s between continuous permafrost to the north and discontinuous permafrost to the south, according to the agency.

Electromagnetic surveys have been used in mining for years, Minsley said. Scientists recently have used it to define the geometry of aquifers in Nebraska.

“What’s new about it is that it’s being used for more discrimination of more subtle features related to things like groundwater and permafrost,” Minsley said.

The tool is torpedo-shaped and about 33 feet long. In front are coils oscillating at different frequencies, Minsley said. Towed by a helicopter and flown just under 100 feet off the ground, the tool sends electromagnetic pulses into the ground and determines what’s below by measuring how well the pulse is conducted. The ground itself has conductors and resistors. Permafrost is not as conductive as solid ground.

“It induces currents in the ground. Those currents induct a signal, a magnetic field, that’s picked up by another set of coils that’s in the back of that thing that we’re towing under the helicopter,” Minsley said.

The tool collected data that showed a lack of permafrost below the Yukon River and other water bodies that don’t completely freeze in the harsh interior Alaska winter.

“That’s consistent with a lot of conceptual models that people have developed, but they haven’t really had the solid measurements that we have to see that,” Minsley said.

The mapping also showed “thermal relics” where the Yukon River had been centuries ago. As the river migrated to a new location, ground slowly refroze. The farther away from the new location, the more it had frozen in a downward slope. Minsley said it was the biggest surprise of the study.

“It was not something we expected to capture in this data set, to actually see that thermal legacy over a thousand-year history. That’s pretty rare for this kind of data,” he said.

The tool collected data over only one week in June 2010. Minsley said he spent four to five months analyzing and processing data to make images, and the research team spent many more hours interpreting the results.

Drilling boreholes to acquire the same information would have taken a much greater effort, he said.

Source: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/ad6b2e26841f4a43b94544da1fc50b34/AK–Permafrost-Mapping/

Shell and HP have announced a breakthrough in the capability of their jointly developed inertial sensing technology to shoot and record seismic data at much higher sensitivity and at ultra-low frequencies.

The new onshore wireless seismic acquisition system is designed to provide a clearer understanding of the earth’s subsurface, thus increasing prospects for discovering greater quantities of oil and gas to meet the world’s increasing energy needs.

The sensing technology has now been demonstrated to have a noise floor – a measure of the smallest detectable acceleration over a range of frequencies – of 10 nano-g per square root Hertz (ng/rtHz), which is equal to the noise created by the earth’s ocean waves at the quietest locations on earth as defined by the Peterson low noise model. The tests were conducted in the seismic testing vault at the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory facility in New Mexico.

The seismic system uses the breadth of HP’s technology development capabilities as well as Shell’s advanced geophysical expertise in seismic data acquisition systems and operations. As such, this collaboration builds on the core strengths of each company to advance technology in this field.

The system will be delivered by HP Enterprise Services and the company’s IPG. It is based in part on the high-performance sensing technology originally co-developed by HP Labs – the company’s central research arm – along with IPG and Shell research in seismic network design.

Fig. 1. The survey will be flown using BlueQube technology.

http://www.engineerlive.com

Potential field data provides alteration signatures

Linking geology and geophysical data

Chemical alteration in 3D

3D inversion of geophysical data

Changes in alteration types

This technique has allowed us to attribute anomalies in physical properties, with respect to the ‘normal’ host properties, with an expected alteration type. The technique is particularly applicable in the Cobar region because there is limited physical property contrast between host units and alteration is the predominant cause of geophysical anomalies. The technique is also applicable in regions that are under significant cover. As with any geophysical technique, the exact results will depend on the property contrast from host to altered product. A strong host-to-host property contrast will require a more detailed geological model to obtain the best results, but mapping of gross alteration trends should still be possible with only a very simple inversion reference model.

NEOS believes that an integrated analysis of multiple geological and geophysical (G&G) data sources – including seismic, gravity, magnetic, electromagnetic (EM), radiometric, and hyperspectral – can individually and collectively deliver improved insights into the rocks and fluids contained within the Earth.

“NEOS was formed to be a different kind of geosciences company where “Silicon Valley meets the oil patch.” We aspire to help our clients unlock the riches of the Earth by bringing to bear the latest technologies and the best people, wherever they might be located.”

One of our largest investors is the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), the entity that backed pioneering companies such as Google, Symantec, Amazon, and Electronic Arts. By tapping into the networks of KPCB and our two other lead investors – Goldman Sachs and Passport Capital – we ensure our methods incorporate the latest thinking in sensors, computing, neural networks, visualization and intelligent search.

NEOS has been working over the last several years with leading technologists to develop the NeoSphere™, their proprietary data management system that allows a statistically-driven, multivariate inversion to be performed using all available data and modeling products. NEOS’s multi-measurement inversion incorporates all G&G data that has been obtained, acquired, or computed, along with additional geochemical and hydrocarbon production (and mineral resource) data provided by our clients and third parties.

Fixed Wing

NEOS generally uses company-owned Twin Otter aircraft for airborne sensor deployment. The Twin Otter offers a reliable platform that is capable of operating in remote, low-service locations. NEOS’s Twin Otter platforms are outfitted with advanced gravity, magnetic, and hyperspectral sensors.  NEOS’s hyperspectral sensor package records more than 600 contiguous channels – from ultraviolet to thermal infrared – with a spatial resolution of 3m. The Twin Otter is also capable of safely operating across a range of altitudes, providing the flexibility needed to tailor acquisition to the resolution and penetration depths required by the subsurface imaging objectives.

Satellite

NEOS does not own or operate satellite systems, but instead licenses existing geophysical datasets – primarily low-resolution hyperspectral data from known satellite operators.  The ready availability, wide areal coverage, and cost effectiveness of most satellite datasets adds to their appeal. While the quality of satellite-based hyperspectral data(100 channels, ~10m resolution) is insufficient for detailed basin-level or prospect-level mapping, it is usually sufficient to feed into our neoSCAN ‘quick look’ solution.

Rotary Wing

When the next level of resolution and subsurface penetration is required, NEOS secures widely available helicopter platforms capable of deploying our advanced sensor payload system. Towed beneath the helicopter at an elevation of 30 meters above the ground, our typical rotary-wing payload package includes electromagnetic, radiometric, high resolution magnetic, hyperspectral, and gas detection sensors that NEOS has refined and optimized for natural resource mapping.

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UBC-GIF has finished 3D modeling of resistivity gradient survey data with EH3Dinv code (http://era-max.ca/examples.html, last two examples ). EH3Dinv is a computing code developed at UBC − GIF for inverting controlled source frequency-domain EM data to recover a 3D electrical conductivity (Inversion of 3D electromagnetic data in frequency and time domain using an inexact all-at-once approach. Eldad Haber, Uri M. Ascher, and Douglas W. Oldenburg. GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 69, NO. 5, 2004; P. 1216–1228).

The ERA’s technology, in brief, is “cross-disciplinary” – between frequency-domain and direct current (DC) concepts. The technology provides high resistivity resolution by grounded, non-contact and/or combined modes of electrical field measurements at 1.22-2500Hz. In comparison with DC method ERA equipment is several times more sensitive and in comparison with frequency-domain is defined as high-resolution.

Geophysics is a constantly evolving science, but once in a while a truly revolutionary idea or concept comes to the fore. Reflecting the true anisotropic nature of the earth in seismic models, adding resistivity to the marine geophysics toolbox, or imaging complex targets from multiple angles are at least somewhat commonplace today, but when these ideas were introduced they were radical departures from conventional wisdom. In this webcast you’ll hear from the “great thinkers” who had the inspiration and courage to follow their instincts and change geophysics in the process.

Geoscience Australia has just released a new fifth edition full-colour Magnetic Anomaly Map of Australia at a scale of 1:5 million. It is estimated that 27 million line-kilometres of survey data were acquired to produce this new edition which is eight million line-kilometres more than were acquired for the previous edition released in 2004.

Information in the new magnetic anomaly map and associated grid database provides insights into the distribution of magnetically susceptible minerals within the Earth’s crust. Such insights are of great value to energy and mineral exploration companies and for research into the solid earth and the environment. Magnetic minerals in small amounts are widespread in the crust, and become concentrated in zones which highlight the structure of the crust. This is particularly important for areas which have a significant thickness of surface cover (regolith and sedimentary basins) which can mask the underlying crystalline basement rocks. The magnetic signatures of the basement are measured through the cover and provide important information to help determine the nature and depth of the basement.

For more information phone Peter Milligan on +61 2 6249 9224 (email peter.milligan@ga.gov.au) or visit www.ga.gov.au/products/servlet/controller?event=GEOCAT_DETAILS&catno=70282
Geophysical datasets phone Murray Richardson on +61 2 6249 9229 (e-mail murray.richardson@ga.gov.au)

Geoscience Australia announced opening of Airborne Gravity Test Site ‘Kauring’.

“Researchers, resource exploration companies and their support industries will be able to properly test their equipment at a new facility set up in Western Australia. It is the Kauring Airborne Gravity Test Site east of Perth which allows operators to test the capabilities of airborne gravity (AG), airborne gravity gradiometer (AGG) and other airborne sensing systems against gravity and magnetic anomalies.

The anomalies have been defined by detailed ground and airborne surveys which will provide a high degree of accuracy to ground-truth and compare airborne systems. As part of using the site any data acquired or products derived as a result of flying over the test site will be made available to researchers and other interested individuals or organisations for independent analysis.

In addition to allowing AG and AGG data to be evaluated against the detailed ground gravity data, the site will enable direct comparison of different AG and AGG systems over the same gravity features. The site is a collaborative venture involving Geoscience Australia, the Geological Survey of Western Australia and the mining and resource company Rio Tinto as well as the airborne survey company, Fugro Airborne Surveys.”

More than one month ago ION and BGP took another bold and pioneering step on behalf of the seismic industry for, on that day, they launched INOVA. Legally known as INOVA Geophysical Equipment Limited, this new and independent company is owned 51% by BGP and 49% by ION Geophysical Corporation. Combining the acknowledged strengths of its parents, INOVA aspires to engineer and deliver innovative land seismic technologies that can stand up to the rigors of acquisition in any operating environment. INOVA’s comprehensive portfolio of offerings  includes path-breaking products such as Aries II, FireFly, VectorSeis, and the AHV-IV Commander vibroseis vehicle.

Codevintec was on the receiving end of numerous hours of training regarding 3D technology and Marine Seismology including the GeoEel (digital towed hydrophone streamers) and MicroEel (analog seismic solid streamer). Bart Hoekstra, 3D Product Manager conducted the training.

Source: http://www.geometrics.com/blog/2010/03/italy-embraces-3d-and-marine-seismic-technology