Offshore staff
BERGEN, Norway — Petrobras and Shearwater have entered a multi-year technology agreement concerning seismic exploration and field developments offshore Brazil.
Shearwater will deploy its marine vibrator named project BASS. The seismic source technology is said to offer advances in operational efficiency, seismic data quality and reduced sound emissions compared with traditional techniques.
The aim is to industrialize the technology and associated services for Brazil to speed up exploration and development of fields, with improved control of the seismic frequencies emitted in Brazilian waters, said Roberta Alves Mendes, reservoir technology general manager at Cenpes Petrobras.
Shearwater has been developing BASS with support from major Norwegian offshore operators at its Technology and Innovation Center in Oslo. According to the company, marine vibratory energy sources, unlike pneumatic energy sources, are non-impulsive and emit energy over a longer time.
Vibratory sources are also said to deliver improved control over the emitted acoustic energy into the water. Creative use of this control, the company claims, leads to higher productivity in marine seismic acquisition, with faster surveys and reduced emissions.
And the non-impulsive mode of energy emission can limit the potential impact of seismic data acquisition on marine life.
In Brazil, the company plans co-deployments with its Pearl ocean-bottom node system, which is designed to be compact with a fully wireless interface and a long battery life, supporting survey design, automation and digitalization. Pearl also has been developed at the Oslo center and is manufactured at Shearwater’s complex in Penang, Malaysia.
11.22.2023
