Saudi Aramco’s EXPEC Advanced Research Center (ARC) launched SEARCH, the Seismic and Electromagnetic (EM) for Advanced Reservoir Characterisation initiative.
The two main objectives of SEARCH are to improve seismic and EM acquisition and processing technologies to achieve at least 3m vertical resolution at the reservoir level, and to develop technologies for continuous reservoir monitoring.
As part of the SEARCH initiative, Saudi Aramco EXPEC ARC is focusing on burial of sources and receivers for improved signal to noise, continuous geophysical acquisition, horizontal borehole technologies for high resolution extended imaging, and novel non-seismic acquisition and processing methods to gain better fluid saturation estimates.
Saudi Aramco is currently conducting a series of field trials to validate potential improvements and optimal designs for seismic data repeatability by burying sources and receivers. In addition, both seismic and non-seismic field tests and methods are under way to enable imaging away from the wellbore.
