Projects
Total Seismic has provided high value geophysical and project delivery consulting services for a wide range of scopes, industry sectors and clients. We create custom solutions for each project and integrate our business principles Controlled Project Delivery and Value of Information Optimisation in everything we do to maximise value for our clients. A snapshot of recent Total Seismic projects is provided below to illustrate the diversity of our expertise and the performance and value that we bring.
The world’s largest onshore seismic program
Queensland and New South Wales coalfields
Total Seismic spearheaded the worlds largest seismic program for a major coal operator, providing world class technical, project delivery, seismic contract, contractor management and field supervision services. We also worked to strengthen our client’s capability to meet their longer term seismic project management and organisational goals.
Over a 3 year period, Total Seismic helped our client to deliver the initial six 3D seismic surveys of a large, long term seismic program which covered most of their Australian open-cut and underground mining areas. The work coincided with the arrival of lightweight node seismic receivers in Australia. Total Seismic used this unique opportunity to iteratively improve the performance of all aspects of our clients seismic operation. The results we safely achieved for our client were a fourfold increase in productivity and a step-change improvement in trace density, cost per trace and Value of Information. Critical to our client’s success were our extensive experience delivering geophysical operations from an operator company’s perspective and our technical expertise and Titan geophysical software package. Our co-authored AEGC19 paper describes this work in more detail: Link to AEGC19 Paper
“Total Seismic brought deep seismic project delivery and technical expertise that helped us achieve step-change safety, productivity and imaging improvements on our high-resolution, shallow, and near-mine 3D seismic surveys. Neil and his team are tireless in their pursuit of project goals and working with Total Seismic has been a highly beneficial experience.”
Eric Battig | Principal Geophysicist | BHP
Onshore seismic survey value optimisation
Surat-Bowen basin, Queensland
Total Seismic are experts in value-optimised seismic survey design. We have recently designed four high production Surat-Bowen basin 3D seismic surveys for a number of oil and gas clients, taking advantage of lightweight node receiver and simultaneous vibroseis source technology to minimise cost-per-trace. The key strategic challenge for each survey was to establish which parameters would obtain the required-and-achievable data quality as cost-effectively as possible. Some projects were designed to provide basic geological structure for a very low cost. For other surveys, to maximise Value of Information we provided super-high trace density designs with the potential to provide data which would characterise reservoir rock and fluid properties. One of our Surat basin survey designs has over 40 times the trace density of an adjacent survey acquired in 2005 and will be acquired for a fraction of the per-area cost!
Total Seismic has used its expert project delivery, contract development and field services to progress two of these surveys to ‘execution-ready’.
“Total Seismic have helped us realise new data opportunities that we weren’t aware of, which could have big implications for the value of our Queensland assets.”
Luke Titus | Chief Technical Officer | Armour Energy
Nickel Sulphide 3D seismic exploration
Western Australia
Total Seismic have designed many seismic surveys across Australia for different types of mineral geology targets. One interesting project was a 3D seismic survey over a large Nickel Sulphide mine in WA with existing open-cut, underground mines and surrounding exploration prospects. Challenges for the project included a steeply dipping igneous target geology, surface obstructions from legacy mining operations, abundant Cultural Heritage artefacts and a paucity of velocity information in the mine’s well log database. With intensive field scouting, analysis of existing subsurface data, careful selection of equipment, rich azimuth-offset survey design and aggressive acquisition parameters, we were able to demonstrate that a high trace density 3D survey could be acquired within the allocated budget. We also recommended deploying an array of geophones in a mine shaft 800m underground to provide a secondary seismic tomography dataset and velocity information to improve the 3D reflection seismic data processing.
Cross-basin land and marine seismic surveys
Perth basin, Western Australia
We have recently worked on seven Perth basin seismic projects for a number of clients. These involved reprocessing and detailed shot record analysis of streamer, ocean bottom and onshore data, remote quality control services, survey design value optimisation and a range of strategic advice.
We provided feasibility assessments for four shallow water marine surveys to optimise data value, project feasibility and cost, and to minimise strategic project risks and the impact to people and the environment.
We also provided survey designs and feasibility studies for three large onshore 3D seismic surveys with simultaneous broadband vibroseis sweeps and super-high trace densities around 10 times that of a nearby survey acquired in 2020. Our parameters were carefully selected to overcome surface signal attenuation and image the deep target, and our high production acquisition plans will ensure that the data will be acquired cost-effectively.
“Total Seismic’s experience with transition zone seismic, involving land and ocean bottom seismic, and with shallow water streamer seismic was very valuable in evaluating seismic acquisition in very shallow waters of the Perth Basin.”
Matt Fittall | Subsurface Manager | Triangle Energy
Our variable survey designs can really add value for shallow seismic surveys and those whose targets have large depth variations. We are able to maintain trace density across the target in a way that provides large cost savings relative to a single survey design and minimises design footprints and data processing issues. One such project was for a survey in the onshore Otway basin, whose target horizon plunged from 1km depth to 4km depth.
“Total Seismic did an excellent job for us of scoping out, modelling and designing optimum parameters for a 3D seismic survey in a geologically and environmentally challenging area.”
Danny Burns | Executive-Exploration | Vintage Energy Ltd
Variable onshore seismic survey design
Onshore Otway basin, Victoria
EM geophysics and survey supervision
New South Wales and Queensland
Total Seismic supported a coal mining client for several surface and airborne EM surveys across New South Wales and Queensland. The work included modelling, survey design, equipment selection and HSE Supervision, including specialist helicopter operations HSE supervision. The objectives were to resolve the base of weathering, surface basalt, coked coal and near-surface oxidation, and to undertake 3D inversion to help with depth to target estimation. The work was completed successfully and safely.
African dynamite seismic survey
East Africa
Total Seismic’s services were engaged by a multinational petroleum Operator for the survey design, strategic planning and seismic contract and tender support for a multi-target onshore 2D dynamite survey in East Africa. Following detailed analysis of existing data using our Titan software package, we were able to provide a survey design with correct point spacing and far offset to maximise useful trace density at all target depths and adequately sample lateral noise. Our advice on dynamite shot size and recommendations for source and receiver equipment will provide significant cost savings for our client and confidence that the project can be completed successfully with the available dynamite inventory.
3D seismic in remote canyonlands
Northern Territory
Total Seismic provided feasibility and survey design work for multiple 3D seismic surveys in remote canyonlands of the Northern Territory. The prevalence of 200m deep ravines, isolated islands of high elevation, rocky surface conditions and a target geology which is unusual for petroleum exploration provided a number of technical, logistic, operational and HSE challenges for the project. Our study concluded that with exclusion zones and point offsetting/recovery, careful selection of equipment, operational measures to maximise coupling and a range of innovative logistic strategies to move people and equipment around the survey, a useful 3D seismic dataset could be acquired. Our cost and schedule estimates included thorough justifications for the numbers and assumptions used so that our client could make strategic financial investment decisions with confidence.
“These are some of the toughest seismic operations I can think of, but with Total Seismic’s work we feel we have great survey designs and understand the schedule and cost to execute these projects with confidence.”
Luke Titus | Chief Technical Officer | Armour Energy
Frontier seismic surveys for mineral sands
Northwest Queensland
Total Seismic provided a range of services including survey design, contract and tender work, field HSE and technical supervision and equipment HSE audits for mineral sands seismic surveys in remote northwest Queensland. There was no existing seismic data in the area so we recommended the use of cable recording equipment to be able to assess data quality in real time. The Total Seismic field geophysicist – using our Titan software package – processed the acquired data each day and was able to determine that the survey was resolving the target geology and could continue. Our technical support eliminated the major strategic-commercial risk of the surveys being completed (and full costs incurred) without meeting the technical objectives.
2D Seismic Data Processing
Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory
Total Seismic has provided high quality, competitively priced land and marine 2D seismic data processing and reprocessing services for a number of petroleum, coal and minerals explorers in recent years. An example project is where we were asked to reprocess a recently acquired deep-crustal seismic survey in the Northern Territory for an Australian oil and gas operator. Despite the very deep target of the original survey, the near-offset data was sufficient to effectively resolve the relatively shallow petroleum geology. We cut out the far offset data, reprocessed the data with a focus on the petroleum target depth range and provided Pre Stack Time Migrated stacks with a significant improvement in stratigraphic and structural resolution of the basin.
“A major improvement in data quality – getting Total Seismic to reprocess this data was a good decision. Great value.”
Luke Titus | Chief Technical Officer | Armour Energy