PanGeo Subsea Inc. (PanGeo) and Global Geophysical Services Inc, two leading geophysical service and technology providers, announced that they have entered into an agreement for the development and commercialization of the Acoustic Zoom® product line.
Acoustic Zoom® uses steered beams of acoustic energy to produce 3D seismic images of the subsurface with higher definition than can be attained with conventional seismic migration techniques. Acoustic Zoom® offers the potential for providing new insight into the internal character of petroleum reservoirs. The development partners believe this technique will be particularly well suited to the unconventional “tight” reservoirs such as the Eagle Ford formation of South Texas and the Marcellus shale play (Appalachia) where understanding natural and stimulated fractures of the reservoir can be a key to optimal petroleum production.
Under the scientific direction of Dr. Jacques Guigne, PanGeo has successfully commercialized the use of acoustic beam steering methods within their geotechnical product line Acoustic Corer. “ It is a natural continuation along this technology development path to apply similar scientific principles to petroleum reservoirs. The combination of PanGeo’s Acoustic Zoom® intellectual property and signal processing know-how along with GGS’s premier seismic data acquisition capabilities is expected to bring the new product line to market at an accelerated pace than would otherwise have been possible,” noted Dr. Guigne .
Tom Fleure, Global’s Senior Vice President of Geophysical Technologies noted, “Upon commercialization, Acoustic Zoom® will offer GGS clients the opportunity to focus their analysis on specific areas of interest within a larger data volume. Doing so would be analogous to applications of enhanced MRI techniques in the medical profession. Applying the technique across Global’s expansive unconventional resource data library holds unique opportunities for value creation for our customers.”
An Acoustic Zoom® project of 12.5 sq. km has already been jointly acquired by the parties over GGS’s Wrangler 3D multi-client survey in Wilson County Texas over the prolific Eagle Ford (shale), Austin Chalk (chalk), and Buda (limestone) formations. Over two terabytes of data were acquired using a custom array of 4000 receivers with frequencies of up to 170 Hz recorded. Initial results are very encouraging as the data undergoes continued processing by the Acoustic Zoom geoscience team.
Under this agreement GGS becomes a minority shareholder in the jointly owned entity Acoustic Zoom Inc., formed in Newfoundland, Canada.
[mappress] Subsea World News Staff , January 31, 2012;