Successful PetroMarker acquisition 2008

A total of 11 prospects and 3 known fields have been evaluated by use of this new technology. Prospects in the North Sea, Norwegain Sea and Barents Sea, shallow and deep water have been tested. The known reservoirs have been included both as reference for similar prospects and also for testing the capabilities at different conditions.  Large spans in parameters like water depths, reservoir depths and hydrocarbon zone thichness have been verified.

The technology was verified on the Troll Field in 2007. In addition to the verification, the Troll acquisition indicated which parts of the system that could be improved. Safer and more efficient equipment handling has successfully been implemented. In addition significant progress have been made in order to acquire more reliable data, such as increased pulsing current (2000A-5000A) and improved receiver antenna design for noise reduction.

Many companies have shown interest in this new technology. Most of the surveys are therefore performed by Discover Petroleum together with one or several partners. This has also resulted in application co-operation in the concession rounds. The companies that have been involved are StatoilHydro, Shell, Gaz de France, Det norske, Aker Exploration and Skagen 44.

Significant amount of data have been evaluated lately. This has been done in close co-operation between the G&G personnel and the EM group of 6-7 physicists within Discover. The results have been used both to prioritize the blocks in the concession rounds and as a part of the application evaluation and documentation. The main result of the EM data is a modification of the discovery probability. The experience is that the tool has an important impact of the final probability, in both directions.

The survey has also shown that there is still room for improvements in order to make the tool even more useful. These improvements have the same objective as last year's changes; acquire data with improved signal to noise ratio at improved cost efficiency. The organizations in Discover Petroleum and PetroMarker are closely co-operating in evaluating and defining modification to equipment and processing to be ready before next years survey.

Improvements for the interpretation phase are also in progress. A program has been started to improve modeling and inversion techniques and software. This program involves Discover Petroleum, PetroMarker and Norut. This work will enable a more precise modeling of the response and an improved coupling of all available data such as seismic, well data with the EM reponses