TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT IN THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY: A CONSIDERATION OF THE NODAL SEISMIC SYSTEM
©2015
Textbook
28 Pages
Summary
Technology has proved its credibility by helping us to combat some of the most important challenges in decades. On a high interest, our yesterday’s concerns are now our jubilations today. Also, various innovations that technology is offering our industry today has shown to us clearly that the industry cannot afford to shuttle its today’s cares till tomorrow. It is even more interesting that today, creative minds in the industry are already gazing into the future in other to tackle our tomorrow’s challenges right from now. All these validate a simple fact that: “the oil and Gas industry is a technology based and innovation driven” (David, 2011).
The phase changes and its adaptation is so rapid that if professionals fails to yield to it or feels reluctant to its tingle, such would be dismayed in waiting and may find it stiff in catching up with the transiting train. The thrust of the drive witnessed by the industry in the recent decade is intense. This is wholly responsible to the world’s high demand for our commodity (Oil and Gas), our daily venture into the ultra-deepwater exploration, unconventional resource exploration systems which is always beckoning on new and strong techniques. All of these are enough to charge professionals, to be awake to the demands of their fields by yielding their thoughts to the present breakthrough and preparing to face the next decade’s challenges
One important breakthrough that technology has offered the seismic data acquisition field of recent is the “Nodal Seismic System”. The success is currently attracting a great deal of key players from every end of the industry and has kept discussions on over time. The advancement is also known as Cableless, Wireless or Nodal seismic acquisition system, as it may be. It is an improvement over the conventional cabled seismic acquisition system. An overview of this advancement In relation to the challenges it solved has been looked into in his article.
The phase changes and its adaptation is so rapid that if professionals fails to yield to it or feels reluctant to its tingle, such would be dismayed in waiting and may find it stiff in catching up with the transiting train. The thrust of the drive witnessed by the industry in the recent decade is intense. This is wholly responsible to the world’s high demand for our commodity (Oil and Gas), our daily venture into the ultra-deepwater exploration, unconventional resource exploration systems which is always beckoning on new and strong techniques. All of these are enough to charge professionals, to be awake to the demands of their fields by yielding their thoughts to the present breakthrough and preparing to face the next decade’s challenges
One important breakthrough that technology has offered the seismic data acquisition field of recent is the “Nodal Seismic System”. The success is currently attracting a great deal of key players from every end of the industry and has kept discussions on over time. The advancement is also known as Cableless, Wireless or Nodal seismic acquisition system, as it may be. It is an improvement over the conventional cabled seismic acquisition system. An overview of this advancement In relation to the challenges it solved has been looked into in his article.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
4
through the Cableless seismic system. An overview of this advancement In
relation to the challenges it solved has been looked into in his article.
Many are the other success that has been recorded through technological
advancements (although it would not be considered as such); improvements in
Geophysics have led to the clear understanding of reservoirs. More often than
before, Petrophysicists analyze reservoirs more confidently than before. Also,
technological improvements have helped to have a much better picture of
subsalt prospects in important oil reserves of the world. It was formerly
believed that targets below salts are subsalt and are difficult to image while
targets below limestone are lime.
Other Technological enablements are;
The realtime reservoir modeling (4D Seismics, Intelligent Completion
Downhole sensors), Well productivity (new well geometries) and many
more.
Presently, the industry is being faced with some challenges which are yet to be
efficiently catered for by these advancements. Productions and understanding
of shale gas, shale oil and other unconventional resource systems still need
some advancement. One can afford to put the mind at rest because more
companies and individuals are delving more into researches on these areas of
less understanding.
The question that could begin to bother the mind is that: "where would the
fast transiting train of technological advancements take us to in the next
decades?" a definite answer to this question might be hard but, undoubtedly,
the train is taking us to heights. It is great to watch but more great to join the
change. As for me, I care to be a part of the movement. What about you?
5
CABLE FREE SEISMICS
From the introduction it has been said that, this seminar work would
concentrate on the cable-free seismic systems
About Wireless Seismic
Wireless Seismic was formed in 2006 to develop and introduce a revolutionary
seismic data acquisition system to the exploration and production industry,
capitalizing on emerging technologies in the seismic, wireless and mesh-
network industries. Its financial backers include Chesapeake Energy
Corporation, one of the largest producers of natural gas and one of the largest
users of seismic data in the United States, and Energy Ventures, a Norwegian-
based venture capital firm with focus on investments in the upstream oil and
gas market.
General Statement
We all know how cellular wireless telephones have spread around the world.
"Cell" phones are in every nook and cranny of the earth and are used by
people of all ages, nationalities, and professions. This same cellular wireless
technology has now entered the onshore seismic data-acquisition world. Just
as a distant friend using a cell phone can cause a system of radio-tower relays
to reach your cell phone and leave a message or transmit a graphic image, a
small cellular wireless unit attached to a geophone can transmit the data
recorded by that geophone through a system of radio antennae to a central
data-storage unit.
Cable-free land seismic Data acquisition
Cables have always been seen as a necessary evil when it comes to seismic
surveys, but the good news is that the burdens created by cables may soon be
a thing of the past (Dennis, 2011).
Starting with the very first crew, all land seismic acquisition projects have had
one characteristic in common: Cables, cables and more cables. The land
seismic data acquisition industry is known around the world for requiring
massive amounts of cable.
The terrain over which these cables must cross is often treacherous; the
weather, sometimes harsh; and the equipment, always heavy and
cumbersome. Cables have always been a burden, not only to acquisition crews,
6
but also to the land being surveyed and, ultimately, to the individuals who use
the data acquired.
Earlier on, large moving mass, coiled seismic sensors, often called jugs, were
wired together and connected to a magnetometer so that physical motions in
the earth could be transformed into squiggles on graph paper. Today's sensors,
from highly sophisticated velocity sensors to cutting-edge accelerometers,
have dramatically improved. Likewise, acquisition output has evolved from
those raw analogue squiggles to digital representations on magnetic and optic
media. Unfortunately, despite these significant technological advances, one
thing did not change. Until very recently, the vast majority of seismic data
acquisition systems still required tons of unwieldy and troublesome cables.
Today, new options are being introduced that can partially or completely
eliminate cables from the seismic data acquisition experience. Geophysical
equipment manufacturers are developing acquisition systems that make cables
obsolete, and not just the telemetry cables that carry data from the various
remote units to a central location, but also the remote-unit power cables, as
well as the analogue cables that transmit signals from the sensors to the
remote units.
Some systems even eliminate the need for a string of geophones from the
equation. These new cable-free systems are commonly referred to as nodal
data acquisition systems. Nodes are generating a great deal of attention from
both contractors and oil companies worldwide because they represent one of
the most important technological advances in the history of the industry.
Problem Statement
To quantify the amount of equipment required of a conventional cabled land
system (and therefore what could potentially be eliminated by a cable-free
system), let's analyse a typical 4,000-channel seismic acquisition system with
receiver-station spacing of 30 meters (plus 10 per cent): Such a system would
require 132,000 m. (132 Km) of in-line cable.
This cable would house telemetry twisted-pair wires and, in most instances,
power wires. The in-line cable alone would weigh in at 6,000 Kg. Add in the
geophone strings (33 m, each with six geophones) for another 132 Km of cable,
weighing a bit over 15,000 Kg. Power for the line would typically require some
84 power stations at 58 Kg each for another 4,872 Kg. For our hypothetical
4,000-channel 2D line, we would require some 264 Km of cable and weigh in at
around 25,872 Kg, or slightly less than 6.5 Kg, per channel. Add to this the fact
that e
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9
THE MECHANISM DEFINED
The scope of this seminar3 would broadly divide the cable-free seismic data
acquisition systems into two types based on their mechanisms, namely:
1. Wireless Geophone Network
2. Autonomous Nodal System.
The Mechanism defined
A system that acquires seismic data using cellular wireless technology is similar
to a cellular telephone system in a large city. Inside the hypothetical city limits,
several radio towers create overlapping reception/broadcast areas that
combine to cover the city. Through a connection of radio towers, a cellphone
user at A can talk to B, or transmit digital information to, a second cellphone
user at B. (Figure 4a), The diagram implies that A and B exchange information
via pass-along communication links 1, 2, 3, and 4, which span many miles.
In wireless seismic data acquisition, a geophone is connected directly to a
small, wireless, remote acquisition unit (RAU) that functions essentially the
same as a common cell phone (Figure 5). The RAU has an accurate internal
clock that is synchronized with the internal clocks in all other RAUs across the
seismic spread.
Each RAU also has an internal GPS receiver that adds precise earth coordinates
to all data acquired by its assigned geophone. The seismic signal from the
geophone is digitized by the RAU and then stored in flash memory the same
type of
Memory used in cell phones functioning as cameras that acquire, transmit, and
receive photographs. Wireless cellular seismic systems made by current
manufacturers differ in how they handle the data received from geophones.
In some systems, each RAU transmits its data to a central data storage unit via
a system of overlapping radio-antennae patterns. In Figure 4b, the data
transmission from geophone station C to data-storage unit D occurs via pass-
along protocols between radio antennae a, b, c, and d.
In other systems (Autonomous Nodal System), data stay in the RAU and are
downloaded to a data-storage unit at appropriate time intervals. In one option,
each RAU is physically transported to a local data-storage device and then
returned to its assigned geophone station. In yet other systems, a technician
visits each RAU at selected times with a PC and uses a data wand to dump data
from the RAU memory into the PC.
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11
The logistic and weight costs that are caused by cables for high density
receivers can be in principle removed by deploying geophones equipped
with wireless trans-receivers to form a Wireless Geophone Network
(WGN). A WGN might consist of units (receivers or wireless geophones,
WG) that are in charge of sending their own recording data or
forwarding (relaying) the data of other WGs.
Each WG is battery-powered and is typically equipped with a radio
transceiver (for radio transmission and reception), small microcontroller
and storage unit to handle processing, digitalization and buffering of
seismic data. As for cable-based system, real-time data delivery needs to
be guaranteed so that geophone digital data readings could be conveyed
to storage unit with stringent delay constraints. Moreover, the
control/storage unit provides with the necessary functions of timing and
monitoring of each (wireless) geophone.
Wireless Communication technology
The large field extension and receiver density require the WGN to
exploit sophisticated radio transmission technologies to efficiently handle
either short-range transmissions (e.g., for receiver-to-receiver short-distance
communication within one group interval) and long-range transmissions (for
seismic data delivery to storage unit and geophone remote monitoring) that
must cover distances of several kilometers.
From a communication perspective, a Wireless Geophone Network can be
based on a mixture of network technologies that are working in cooperation:
groups of WGs (e.g., within a group line) are forming independent wireless
sensor networks (WSN, see Figure 4) that are simultaneously operating (e.g.,
sensing and transmitting using different frequencies/channels). At the same
time, each network of sensors is interconnected by long-range wireless links to
form what is usually referenced as scalable wireless metropolitan area network
(WMAN). WMAN network must support long-range links to collect the data
traffic generated by each WSN for propagation toward the central
control/storage unit.
Power Consumption
A limiting constraint in WGN is that sensing units must use very little
energy. Differently from cable-based systems, a wireless geophone must be
equipped with rechargeable batteries. Batteries might become the heaviest
element of cable-free hardware as deployed wireless geophones may need to
be left unattended for days. A fundamental goal of network design is thus to
Details
- Pages
- Type of Edition
- Erstausgabe
- Year
- 2015
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783954893720
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783954893942
- File size
- 3.6 MB
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2015 (February)
- Grade
- 80.0
- Keywords
- technological advancement industry consideration nodal seismic system
