Norwegian seabed seismic services company, Magseis, has selected acoustic positioning equipment from Sonardyne for its upcoming ocean bottom seismic campaign in the Red Sea.
Starting July, and working in partnership with BGP on behalf of Saudi Aramco, the S78 project is expected to last nine months and will involve the deployment ocean bottom recording nodes, each of which will be positioned using Sonardyne’s Ranger 2 USBL (Ultra-Short BaseLine) and small seismic transponder (SST) technologies.
For this summer’s Red Sea survey, Magseis will deploy its marine autonomous seismic system (MASS), which uses thousands of small nodes to create a grid pattern of receivers on the seabed.
SSTs will be attached near the nodes at regular intervals along the cable. As the equipment descends through the water column to the seabed, each SST will be tracked in real-time using the Ranger 2 GyroUSBL transceiver permanently installed on the vessel, Sonardyne explained.
Magseis has also ordered Sonardyne’s Lightweight Release Transponders (LRTs) and rope canisters to enable recovery of seafloor equipment following data acquisition.
Trevor Barnes , sales manager at Sonardyne said: “Magseis have been long term users of our technology and we’re naturally very pleased that they have chosen to increase their investment with this major order for acoustic positioning and release equipment.
“We are continuously evolving our subsea technology to match the ever increasing demand for higher positional accuracy and increased measurement speed so that seismic operators can generate more detailed reservoir information whilst minimising cost.”