f Unlocking exploration markets for deep-water seabed seismic acquisition

The abstract proposes an innovative system to deploy seismic nodes on the seabed that, while based on robust and proven technology, allows deploying seismic nodes on the seabed at unrivalled production rates of several hundreds of nodes per day. In 2016, a full-scale test in 1200m of water demonstrated the system ability to meet tight positioning specifications: 95% of the nodes were laid at less than 5m from their preplot mark, and 100% at less than 10m. The nodes are attached one to another on a line, offering a fast, flexible and scalable recovery method. Such productivity figures are made possible thanks to the remarkably small size of the MASS node: only 8 kgs in the water and about 25cm long. The deployment being a continuous process, the inline sampling of seismic nodes can be increased at a marginal extra cost, offering new opportunities for quality improvement or depopulation of the shot grid. Along with the latest developments on the source side, such as de-blending of simultaneously shot data or reconstruction of depopulated shot grids, this will make large seabed acquisition surveys competitive against multi-azimuth towed streamers projects, offering the seabed seismic image quality now also to exploration projects.