Ocean Bottom Seismic and Blended Sources

Abstract

Summary Whilst the use of autonomous marine nodes for dense receiver - OBC style - geometries has been rapidly growing since its introduction in 2008, the majority of applications have been for appraisal and development purposes where so-called “development” quality data have been required to maintain or improve reservoir production. The use of blended sources has dramatically improved both survey performance and Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS) productivity. By combining the flexibility of receiver geometry that nodes afford with increasing numbers of blended sources the price/performance of full azimuth OBS node acquisition can be enhanced to enable the technology to be used for exploration objectives. In this paper we will review the nodal technology whose unprecedented reliability allows the efficient use of multiple blended sources, describe how we have implemented the Delft University source blending/de-blending approach in practice and demonstrate how sparse receiver/high density blended sources can deliver cost effective full azimuth exploration surveys.