Stryde and Explor Pinpoint have claimed a world record in land seismic trace density after a 1 km 2 field test at the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) research station delivered more than 256 million traces/km 2 .
Stryde and Explor Pinpoint have claimed a world record in land seismic trace density after a 1 km2 field test at the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) research station delivered more than 256 million traces/km2.
In the field test, Stryde’s Nodes and Explor’s source are being trialled against alternative monitoring technologies, such as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) and other geophone products, with the final dataset to be compared to a previous 3D survey that was undertaken using a conventional seismic layout with a buggy-mounted vibratory source.
Stryde, Explor and CMC have been collaborating to demonstrate the suitability of these ground-breaking technologies for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project development and monitoring.
The aim of the test was to demonstrate that Styde’s nodes in combination with Explor’s PinPoint source can be used to map out and monitor the subsurface for CO2 injection without the need for clearing the area or compromising on data quality.
‘Subsurface monitoring is critical to the secure operation of any CCUS facility, but faces several challenges, including cost and space,’ said Stryde in a statement. ‘As storage projects are usually built near existing infrastructure, subsurface image quality is hampered by the constraints of costly and cumbersome legacy seismic acquisition technology and methods. As a result, many previous CCUS projects have struggled to produce high quality subsurface imaging due to the wide spacing between seismic nodes and constraints over source positioning.’
Mike Popham, CEO of Stryde, said, ‘Put simply, we are making high density seismic acquisition accessible for CCUS developers, which will help to drive the uptake of this crucial technology.’
Allan Châtenay, president of Explor said: ‘Our collaboration with Stryde and CMC is changing the game for subsurface imaging in support of CCUS, and we are proud to have achieved trace density 2.5 times the previous Canadian record.’
Don Lawton, director, Carbon Management Canada, said: ‘The scaling down of the size and cost of seismic technology has opened up so much potential for making both development and monitoring affordable.
‘This record-breaking high density has allowed us to accurately model the very shallow subsurface. In prior tests with 3D seismic imaging with wide line spacing, the data for shallow depths cannot be used – ultimately preventing us from exploring what could be valuable information. The density that we can achieve using Stryde and Explor really opens up new possibilities for a range of geotechnical purposes.’
Stryde, CMC, and Explor plan to make data from the demonstration project available under a no-cost licence to academic institutions. Datasets will also be available to license for companies who are considering CCUS.
