Geophysics

Geophysicists at Apache excel at using physics imagery to better understand the structures underneath the surface of the earth. Our geophysics team have routinely “pushed the envelope” in developing new technology and by being early adopters of technology developments offered by the industry.  Some of the recent Apache “firsts” include:

On the NorthWest Shelf in Australia:

• First industry deployment of ocean-bottom seismic nodes around and under producing platforms to image shallow gas drilling hazards.
• Development and first use of:”Fresnel Zone Binning” for marine acquisition, potentially saving the industry billions of dollars in acquisition costs.

In Egypt's Western Desert:

• Early adopter of single vibroseis simultaneous source seismic acquisition, which has subsequently become the standard for many areas of the Middle East.
• Early adopters of improved bandwidth techniques including low frequency capability in vibroseis techniques, and development of methods for improvement of high frequency content, leading to improved bandwidth and better inversion of seismic data.
• Early adopters of wireless seismic technology, with one of the first surveys acquired with Ion’s “FireFly” system, the first overseas deployment of OyoGeospace’s “GSR” system, and then the first deployment of analogue input to FireFly. 
• Early adopters of offset vector tile and regularization methodologies in acquisition and processing, a technique which is becoming standard for land seismic.

The figure above illustrates the improvement in seismic data quality has resulted from the evolution and development of these techniques over the last decade. The data on the left  used the best available technique in 2000, while the data on the right is the same cross section resulting from data recorded in 2010.

These types of innovations are shared among all our regions.  For example, techniques and equipment used in Canada in the winter season are deployed for seismic work in the far south in Tierra del Fuego, which allowed Apache to be the first to conduct year-round operations as well as record the most southerly onshore seismic data ever acquired.

The team continues to develop new methods and ideas and has several patents currently under review for methods, which will significantly improve our exploration success in the future.