Offshore seismic surveyor Shearwater GeoServices has signed a technology sale and transfer deal with the oil firm ConocoPhillips, involving seismic imaging technology that will be implemented in Shearwater's Reveal software.
According to Shearwater, Reveal provides time and depth processing and imaging for both land and marine environments from within a single user interface. Shearwater uses Reveal internally for all processing projects. The software is licensed to oil and gas companies, contractors, consultants and is used by academia for both teaching and research.
"With this partnership, the companies will collaborate closely to allow Shearwater to incorporate ConocoPhillips’ Compressive Seismic Imaging (“CSI”), and other imaging-related algorithms into Reveal. CSI enables geoscientists to reconstruct more accurate and higher quality seismic images with less data, and has enabled ConocoPhillips to improve decision quality, reduce cost and improve efficiency when exploring new areas. The technology will be commercialized for existing and future customers," Shearwater said.
"This is a significant collaboration agreement for both companies and a commitment by Shearwater to developing and deploying state-of-the-art technology and software to the benefit of our clients”, said Simon Telfer, SVP Seismic Processing and Imaging at Shearwater. “Partnering with clients on technology is a key element of our strategy, enabling them to increase value-add from their core activities by leveraging the Reveal seismic platform.”
ConocoPhillips will become a user of Shearwater’s Reveal seismic processing and imaging software while Shearwater has committed to support future development and use of the CSI technology, and to provide ConocoPhillips with potential future seismic acquisition design and imaging services. The agreement also involves high-performance computing infrastructure with over 4,500 compute nodes and 50 Petabytes of storage, which will be deployed throughout Shearwater’s seismic acquisition fleet.
According to Shearwater, CSI uses algorithms to optimize the process of selecting nonuniform data collection points instead of the traditional method of using uniform sampling, which involves collecting data on a regular grid. It enables geoscientists to reconstruct higher-quality, more-accurate images with less data, the company said.