Ion defers plan for Beaufort Sea seismic

Ion Geophysical has decided to defer to next year the basin-wide seismic survey that it had planned to carry out in the Alaska Beaufort Sea between early October and mid-December of this year, Joe Gagliardi, Ion’s director, Arctic solutions and technology, told Petroleum News Aug. 23. The deferral results from a contractual issue with one of Ion’s suppliers, Gagliardi said.

Ion wants to use deeply penetrating seismic signals to reveal the broad characteristics of the petroleum system under the continental shelf along the entire length of the Beaufort Sea, offshore Alaska’s North Slope. The company has developed a novel technique involving the use an icebreaker and seismic vessel working in tandem to enable the surveying to be done in the presence of sea ice, thus avoiding conflicts with other activities such as subsistence whale hunting. Seismic sound detectors are towed more deeply than usual, so that the detectors can operate under the ice.

Ion had originally planned to carry out its survey in the early winter of 2010 but the company cancelled that survey as a consequence of an engine problem with the seismic vessel that it planned to use.

—Alan Bailey