Production • Processing • Handling
Airborne survey techniques for oil and gas exploration
Timothy R Bodger looks at an oil seep detection system that can be installed on an aircraft.
A
fter the Second World War, as the oil industry took stock of its position, logic suggested that as three-quarters of the earth’s surface was water, then a lot of oil must be underwater.
Offshore oil exploration and production was needed.
Te first offshore exploration areas were obvious.
Expansion of onshore fields into the sea’s shallow margins allowed the industry to develop its skills. Techniques were developed, and emboldened by some truly amazing tools and skills offshore explorers now venture into very deep, cold and remote frontier zones that were unimaginable 25 years ago. Oil seeps are often the oil exploration
industry’s first clues to sub-surface and sub-sea oil accumulations. It has been said that 95 per cent of all discoveries were made because of seepage in one form or another.
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Detecting oil seeps from satellite data is not hugely successful. Cold water up-risings and other conditions look pretty much the same as oil from space, and if the oil seep can be seen from space, it is more likely to be a major breach, meaning it has been seeping for thousands of years, or it is a recent accident or tanker flush-out. What was needed was a seep detection system that could be installed on an aircraft and flown in a regional pattern to map seeps to determine where they might be coming from and going to. In the early 1990s, and in collaboration with members of the oil exploration industry, Oilsearch plc, a UK based technology design group, researched and developed the early SEEPFINDER technology, and recently took on the task of developing a new gravity sensing technology, called GRAVEX. In 2011, McPhar International, entered into a business relationship with Oilsearch and are now exclusive territorial license holders of the
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