Game-changing technologies

June 5, 2006
What will be the next game-changing technologies to reduce risk or cut costs in the exploration business of tomorrow?

What will be the next game-changing technologies to reduce risk or cut costs in the exploration business of tomorrow?

“The needs for today and tomorrow are probably the same as for yesterday: extracting more information from geophysical data concerning reservoir quality and the presence of fluids,” Young says. “Seismic imaging, supported by rock physics, is key. Controlled-source electromagnetics and similar ‘new’ technologies yet to be deployed probably will provide important ancillary information.”

Pilenko cites as key areas to watch for innovation wide-azimuth seismic acquisition techniques, continued development in seismic processing technology, and emerging EM technologies.

One spur to development of new technology is the growing concern over political risk, which leads some companies to accept a higher level of subsurface risk.

Pilenko notes the need among operating companies to successfully find a balance between accessing large reserves and taking long-term risk in politically unstable areas.

“In the current environment, many E&P companies seem to be more inclined to accept higher technical or geological risk in more stable areas.”

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Robert Peebler, president and CEO of Input/Output Inc. (I/O), Houston, sees the future in what he terms “digital full wave” seismic. This entails moving beyond 3D seismic’s limitations: measuring ground motion in only one direction and capturing only the pressure, or P-, wave. As reservoir targets become deeper, more subtle, or more structurally complex, or when geophysicists want to delineate rock and fluid properties (and movements) within reservoirs, conventional 3D seismic may no longer suffice, Peebler wrote in I/O’s annual report last year.

If the reflected energy can be recorded in three directions, or vectors, more data are captured and chances are improved for determining where the reflected subsurface energy is coming from, says Peebler. New multiple-component digital microelectromechanical sensors can capture the energy from the full seismic wavefield, “revealing a more holistic, accurate image of the subsurface,” he says.

Until recently, seismic technology didn’t allow cost-effective recording of the full-wave data, which posed processing difficulties and consequently were removed as noise during processing.

“These other waves (especially the shear, or S-, wave) contain valuable information about the subsurface. By removing this information, insights into structure, lithology, and fluid locations were lost,” Peebler says.

Enabling geophysicists to accurately measure and effectively process S-waves helps them to better delineate rock and fluid characteristics within the reservoir, he claims.

Industry also needs to move away from the “shoebox” configuration of traditional seismic surveys in a way that allows a more-tailored approach that is better able to account for velocity changes in the subsurface that otherwise would distort the images obtained, Peebler contends.

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Machnizh contends that industry’s future exploration success will depend on the identification of more-subtle traps.

“Major new reserves will be found as the result of imaging breakthroughs in areas currently considered poor, such as subsalt, subbasalts, and subpermafrost areas,” he says. “These breakthroughs, coupled with stratigraphic interpretation improvements, offer new reserves. Subsalt imaging and time-lapse full-wave digital seismic surveys (4D) are beginning to enable real-time monitoring framework of reservoirs and support the vision of smart-field and real-time operations for today’s complex and remote reservoirs.”

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Bernard thinks that the advent of integrated, real-time processing with interpretation will make a major difference.

“This technology will support ‘what if’ scenarios and reduce uncertainty at the upstream end of our workflows. It will be coupled with highly integrated, prestack interpretation.”

In the final analysis, however, what is needed to produce the next game-changing exploration technology is an accelerated infusion of capital, says Pilenko.

“Of all of the sciences focused on improving our industries exploration success, none have brought gains equivalent to those generated from advances in seismic,” he says. “However, when we look over the last 20 years, exploration spending has been nearly flat. I believe that a step-change in investment around exploration technologies-a real exploration renaissance-is essential to deliver continued game-changing advances in exploration success.”