Working with the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and Aker BP, the company has won research funding from the Norwegian government for a four-year project to turn existing fibre-optic cables into dense seismic arrays.
Working with the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and Aker BP, the company has won research funding from the Norwegian government for a four-year project to turn existing fibre-optic cables into dense seismic arrays.
‘Today, oil and gas reservoir monitoring relies heavily on ocean bottom node (OBN) and towed-streamer surveys. These approaches are proven and highly capable, but not always the most practical fit for every objective. That’s where DAS becomes a potential enabler for a more cost-effective, practical monitoring,’ said Shearwater in a statement.
With the company posting a £15 million operating loss in its fourth quarter results, it is hoped that DAS could help to transform Shearwater’s fortunes in the longer term. ‘DAS has the potential to reduce time requirements and logistical complexity while lowering overall costs and environmental impact. Substantial sensing infrastructure is already in place, and we expect that more will be installed in the future,’ said Shearwater.
Shearwater will benchmark DAS against OBN, using data from Aker BP’s Edvard Grieg field. It will then adapt and scale Elementi Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) and Reverse Time Migration (RTM) imaging platforms for DAS. It will quantify uncertainty present in the subsurface models and images used for monitoring, with machine learning techniques and ensure scalability on GPU Infrastructure. Finally, it will design new monitoring strategies ‘tailored to the specific needs and advantages of surface- and well-based-DAS sensing platforms’.
‘We’re not setting out to replace OBN — at least not everywhere. But by combining DAS and OBN strategically, we aim to extend monitoring capabilities in ways that weren’t possible before,’ said Shearwater. Think lower cost, faster repeat surveys, uncertainty-quantified subsurface information from fewer data, and smarter decision-making.’
‘For projects with tight budgets — like many CCS and geothermal developments, DAS could be the only viable option. And for mature oil fields, it opens up the possibility of more frequent and flexible monitoring strategies,’ the company added.
‘We’re building tools that will plug directly into Shearwater’s Reveal platform including our state-of-the-art Elementi elastic full waveform inversion (FWI) and new machine learning frameworks – tested on real data and ready for real-world use. And with Aker BP’s field data and expertise baked in, we’re making sure this works where it counts,’ Shearwater added in its statement.
By 2029 Shearwater expects to validate the world’s first fully integrated DAS monitoring workflow that could reduce survey emissions by up to a third, while doubling the frequency of data collection, it claimed.
