What's new in exploration: Gulfs of opportunity?

WILLIAM (BILL) HEAD, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 

Did anyone notice that the geopolitical entertainment from the White House has had the effect of distracting the kill-oil crowd into meaningless spaces? At the same time, opportunities to explore for fossil fuels have exploded. That “briar patch, i.e., oil patch” worldwide is experiencing growth and opportunities in new areas, such as southern and western Africa. Exploration includes “next to” the platform discoveries in the GOA/M and the North Sea [waiting to be renamed]. 

Waiting on the money. The tech world of U.S. free money for research has been put on hold. Why? Officials are busy cleaning out DEI and Woke requirements in government contracts. Proposals created for seismic detector research onshore in brownfield and CO₂ situations, with participation from top universities, died when DOE added DEI language to the grant dicta. Oil and CO₂ sequestration reservoir owners could not agree to DEI terms. Methane generators in cattle feed lots and ethanol producers did manage some compliance with the language, as they are receiving 45Q money for carbon capture. Hess is an exception in our industry, as most of their effort is private money. 

Vector recording of seismic reflection and refraction data has been around at least since the mid-1970s. I recall working 3D VSP with Al Balch, Myung Lee, and Bob Ryder at the USGS in 1975, conducting experiments in the Powder River basin of the wonderful state of Wyoming. Software was so primitive that we collaborated with Galperin of Russia to find a theory to build multi-component data reduction [Galperin, Y. I. (1970). All-Union seminar, “Test, results, and prospects of the use of vertical seismic profiling (VSP) for the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of seismic surveying,” Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR, Fiz. Zemli;(USSR), 11]. Fast forward to the year 2000. PGS could shoot 9-component 3D data, but they were limited to conventional 3-component data reduction. Seriously, the science and computing crew had recorded data that was subsurface-dependent, but we did not have the tools to reduce it to rocks or fluids. 

Better tools, better results. Today, we might have those. Nodes are not just for better, faster field deployments in rugged geo terrain or sea floor, but they are now capable of recording data vectors. Research into vector space inverted into rock space is still, unfortunately, primitive. It is time for the industry to look again at the topic brought to the forefront in 2016 by Gaiser. (Gaiser, J., 2026. “3C Seismic and VSP: Converted waves and vector wavefield applications.” https://library.seg.org/doi/book/10.1190/1.9781560803362)  Computation ability is more than 1,000 times better than 1975’s supercomputers, and has tripled just since 2016.  

GTGi contracted to employ 30,000 STRYDE nodes across various European interests [WO on Jan 27]. Since you have limited time, this search will help you find yourself in the technospeak currently used as marketing weapons. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=STRYDE+nodes+&hl=en&as_sdt=0,44   

Or, you can access these two SOA papers: 

• Ourabah, A., and A. Chatenay, “Unlocking ultra-high-density seismic for CCUS applications by combining nimble nodes and agile source technologies,” The Leading Edge, 41(1), 27fibre-33, 2022. 
• Hudson, T. S., T. Kettlety, J. M. Kendall, T. O’Toole, A. Jupe, R. K. Shail, and A. Grand, “Seismic node arrays for enhanced understanding and monitoring of geothermal systems,” The Seismic Record, 4(3), 161-171, 2024. 

Fiber optic development has flourished, not just with vectors. First with DOD apps, then in oil apps, more in seismicity, moved into CO₂ strategies, and now ready for orphan well evaluation. DAS is no longer a mystic swear word. Paulsson Inc., one of my RPSEA researchers, developed sensors incredibly sensitive to nano-acoustic events in wellbores. They have recorded seismic and acoustic signals at energy levels of a few nanojoules (nJ), at frequencies up to several kilohertz (kHz) of rock/fluid phenomenon generated by small fluid flow events. Recovering such data was only possible because of the extreme sensitivity of FOSVS interrogators, Fig. 1.  

Fig. 1. Diagram of Fiber Optic Vector Interpolation in CA.

While such research has not yet manufactured commercial units for the state of the practice [SOP], their results are worth a look. Others, such as SLB, are on the hunt. The adaptation of fiber optics to nodes was more than a switch-out of wires; it also improved the efficiency of field deployments. The Next Gen of acoustics, temperature, and any other micro to nano disturbing of a fiber optic signal is waiting to be inverted or translated into geo forms. Hopefully, it will be restarted by the industry, not waiting on government money or university faculty papers after the administration takes its majority cut of funds. I should also state that the CCP is building a fiber optic vector kit right now and “borrowing” software wherever it can be found. Unplug your computers at night.