Efficient QC solutions for Seismic Source vessels

The marine seismic market is one of the hardest-hit sectors in the downturn. While the offshore industry is gradually recovering, one area that is showing continued growth is the ocean bottom node seismic market. Demand is largely driven by the oil and gas company's focus on increased oil recovery and near-field exploration.

This has significantly increased the demand for seismic source survey vessels, and it has also highlighted the need of having efficient QC systems on these source vessels which enable the delivery of the highest quality of seismic data.

Conventional tools available on some vessels can be outdated and may not provide the required level of QC, and the ability to monitor the performance of seismic sources which is of utmost importance to the efficient completion of any seismic survey.

I have worked for more than nine years in the industry and I can speak out of my experience of all the different technical issues I have observed during this time.

In order to address different issues related to source data QC I believe now it's time for us to adopt new technologies and use cloud-based solutions in order to streamline the QC process.

I have created two web apps that can process and display various attributes related to the performance of seismic sources to show that how web-based solutions can be used.

Web app displaying cross-correlation and spectral deviation in real-time:

Web app displaying conventional attributes but with additional visualizations like box plots which capture data distribution as well:

These real-time graphs in conjunction with raw data displays can prove to be a very efficient and effective method to augment current QC capabilities and help in maintaining the consistency and repeatability of marine seismic sources (airguns) which is of great importance to achieve high-resolution images of the seabed and subsurface.

In challenging offshore conditions, mechanical or electrical failures within the air gun assembly can cause insufficient performance. Air leaks result in pressure drops and are currently recognized as one of the major issues causing downtime and data degradation, often requiring repeating survey lines. As the number of air guns involved in modern surveys increases, it becomes harder to identify potential air leaks in time, increasing the cost of such failures significantly.

The duration of marine surveys can span over several weeks and air gun performance is critical for high-quality seismic data. A very high level of operational consistency is therefore mandatory to produce identical acoustic pulses. Air leaks are amongst the most common malfunctions resulting in pressure drops, immediately affecting survey quality.

The harsh conditions of the oceanic environment along with the long duration for which these source arrays are deployed can result in technical failures. The cost constraints dictating the maintenance tasks only permit them to be performed at pre-determined time intervals. The limited control underwater and lack of visuals available to the operators make monitoring a challenging task.

Thus it is very pertinent that we keep these factors in mind and work towards achieving the highest data quality.