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Ion planning 2012 Beaufort Sea seismic Company wants to use in-ice seismic survey technique to connect Canadian Beaufort Sea data across to data from the Chukchi Sea Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Ion Geophysical plans to conduct a basin-wide 2-D seismic survey along the entire length of the U.S. Beaufort Sea in 2012, connecting surveys that the company has previously conducted in the Canadian Beaufort Sea with a survey conducted in 2006 in the Chukchi Sea. The company uses a technique that allows the survey to be carried out in sea ice conditions, thus allowing the survey operations in the Beaufort Sea to take place between October and December, avoiding a conflict with subsistence whale hunting.
“We do not intend to start any of our projects until after the Kaktovik and Nuiqsut whale hunts and will be starting at the east, at the Canadian-U.S. border, and will work our way west,” Ed Nelson, Ion Geophysical project manager, told the National Marine Fisheries Service’s annual Arctic Open Water Meeting on March 7.
The company originally planned to carry out its U.S. Beaufort Sea survey in 2010, but deferred the survey to 2011 and then to 2012. The company’s in-ice technique involves operating a seismic survey vessel in tandem, behind an icebreaker, with the icebreaker clearing a passage through the ice. Ion uses special equipment that causes the streamer of seismic sound recorders, towed behind the seismic vessel, to operate deeper in the water than usual, so that the streamer can move underneath the sea ice.
Since 2006 Ion has been working in the Arctic since 2006 and has shot a total of 42,832 line-kilometers of seismic using the in-ice technique, Nelson told the Open Water Meeting. Survey areas include northeast Greenland, as well as the Canadian Beaufort where Ion has conducted surveys for five years, Nelson said.
For its 2012 Beaufort Sea survey Ion plans to use the seismic vessel, the Geo Arctic, along with the icebreaker Vladimir Ignatyuk and a support vessel, the Polar Prince. The company expects to record 7,177 kilometers of seismic lines, operating in a nine-tenths to ten-tenths cover of ice less than two feet thick, Nelson said.
Ion conducted a stakeholder outreach program in 2010, meeting with the North Slope Borough, attending the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission’s whaling captains’ convention and visiting Kaktovik, Nuiqsut and Barrow, Nelson said. The company repeated this outreach program in 2011. In February of this year the company visited all of the villages again, he said.
In February Ion met with the whaling captains associations of Barrow and Wainwright, and on March 6 the company signed a conflict avoidance agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, Nelson said.
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