The Arctic waters offshore Alaska and Canada have recently received the attention of oil & gas companies. ION's ArcticSPAN program in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas was developed to give geoscientists a basin-level tool for interpreting new petroleum systems in the offshore Arctic region, which has been largely unexplored by oil & gas companies since the 1980’s.
The program layout was designed with the active participation of regional experts, with the goal of better understanding the regional geology and less explored basins in the region. Seismic data acquisition involved very long offsets of 9,000 meters, record lengths of 18 seconds, and a specially designed seismic source to illuminate the basin.
The Beaufort East program was designed to deliver an accurate understanding of the geologic setting of the MacKenzie Delta area as well as expanding the current understanding of the prospective area northeast of the current MacKenzie Delta production.
The Chukchi program was designed to deliver insight into the Chukchi Sea and provides a regional framework for the proposed MMS November 2007 Lease Sale. Utilizing its Image-Driven approach, GX Technology is managing the entire ArcticSPAN project to ensure that the highest-quality survey design, acquisition, and processing technologies are applied.
Key program components include:
- Delivers insight into the geology of the Canadian Beaufort Sea and the Chukchi Sea
- Approximately 12,000 km of planned new seismic acquisition
- Transects key geological features to place them in a basin-wide context
- Applies technical specifications of acquisition and data processing to optimize event continuity and imaging of deep objectives
