Seismic support service for life-of-field monitoring for Shell, offshore Brazil

In February 2020, RPS delivered geophysical support of field operations for the Shell BC-10 Life of Field project offshore Brazil.

BC-10 is one of the significant milestones in the development and commercialisation of Brazil’s deep-water oil. This project was distinct among seismic operations as it involved a permanent reservoir monitoring system. 

The seismic sensor cable array was installed on the seafloor in 2013 with the intent of monitoring the life of the BC-10 field with successive short-duration seismic source programs. This design streamlines the process of higher generation acquisition by removing the need for receiver deployment and recovery time and guaranteeing consistency of receiver positions by leaving the cables in their original location on the seabed. The seismic data collected is used to detect, monitor, and plan for changes in the subsurface as the field is developed.

RPS had been involved in the BC-10 Life of Field Project since 2011 ,starting first with the factory acceptance testing of the OYO Geospace’s GeoRes SubSea seismic array system in Houston. RPS since worked for Shell on this project supporting all of the infield seismic surveys for the BC-10, starting with the original 2013 baseline survey. At the time of writing, RPS has worked on five monitor surveys with the January 2020 survey being the most current.

To ensure consistency and knowledge retention through these seismic surveys, RPS used the same specialist since the inception of the work and deployed a seismic processing workstation with processing flows prepared by RPS.

The seismic recording room and QC processing centre for this project were located onboard the massive floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Espírito Santo. RPS' knowledge of these systems and data and the retention of knowledge over time helped deliver consistent success for Shell, year over year.

RPS’ highly talented seismic acquisition and QC processing team ensure consistency and knowledge retention through these seismic surveys for Shell offshore Brazil.