|
What is going on at Kitchen Lights? Following a similar application by Furie, SAE applies for 3-D seismic survey permit for the same area of the upper Cook Inlet Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Just a few weeks after Furie Operating Alaska applied to Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas for a permit to conduct an offshore 3-D seismic survey over its Kitchen Lights Unit in the upper Cook Inlet, geophysics company SAExploration has applied to the division for a similar permit covering almost the same area. Furie’s President Damon Kade has told Petroleum News that his company has not commissioned the proposed SAExploration survey and that Furie’s permit application is still filed with the division. SAExploration declined to comment on why it is planning the survey or who the survey is for.
Start in October SAExploration’s application says that the company hopes to start the survey in October and that the survey could take up to a year to complete, with offshore operations only taking place when the inlet is ice free. As reported in the July 28 issue of Petroleum News, Furie has said the start date of its survey would depend on the timing of permit authorization and that the survey might take 120 days to complete, depending on factors such as the commercial fishing schedule and the timing of any other seismic surveying being conducted in the inlet.
Both Furie’s and SAExploration’s plans of operation anticipate the use of nodal seismic receivers tethered to the seafloor, a technique that Apache Corp. has already pioneered in the waters of the Cook Inlet. SAExploration says that its survey will encompass an area of about 406 square miles.
SAExploration’s plan of operations says that seismic data recording will be carried out by placing receiver nodes in patches of six lines of receivers, with lines probably spaced 1,650 feet apart and with receivers spaced at 165-foot intervals along each line. A pattern of 32 seismic sound source lines will cross the receiver lines at right angles and will extend about 2.5 miles beyond the ends of the receiver lines.
Two vessels equipped with 1,760-cubic-inch air guns will traverse the source lines, firing seismic sound signals at 165-foot intervals.
The recording nodes will operate autonomously, with recorded data being downloaded after retrieval from the seafloor.
As seismic recording progresses in a patch, the seismic crew will retrieve the recording nodes from a previous patch, recharge the nodes, download data from the nodes and then redeploy the nodes, ready for use in the next patch, the plan of operations says.
The survey will use a differential global positioning system, involving the use of global positioning satellites and ground based stations, to accurately monitor the positions of survey vessels, with a pinging system using sound signals to determine the precise positions of seafloor recording nodes.
| 