By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Oct. 3 -- OYO Geospace Corp., Stafford, Tex., installed the industry's largest permanent subsea system in Valhall oil field off Norway to facilitate time-lapse seismic acquisition to improve ultimate recovery.
BP Norge operates the field, in 70 m of water in the southern North Sea, in partnership with units of Shell, Amerada Hess, and Total.
More than 90 miles of armored cables consisting of the sensor and digitizing system were trenched 1 m below the sea floor and cabled to the production platform. The system consists of 2,504 multicomponent stations with 10,016 channels.
Data temporarily stored on the platform are available for transmission via fiber optic cable to the processing center onshore or conventionally through stored media.
The systems gathers seismic data and measures tides and reservoir subsidence.
More than 2 years in design and construction, the project was a collaboration between BP and OYO's Geospace Engineering Resources International division.
The permanent seismic system offers significant advantages over retrievable systems in many situations, OYO Geospace said.