Industry majors set in motion next phase of project that aims to cut reservoir monitoring costs

A number of industry partners have kicked off the next phase of the On Demand Ocean Bottom Node (OD OBN) development project which aims to provide a versatile, lower-cost, more resilient solution for time-lapse seismic and subsidence monitoring of producing reservoirs.

The project, which began in 2018, involves a collaboration between industry partners including Sonardyne, Shell Brasil Petróleo, Petrobras and SENAI CIMATEC and is supported under the Research Development and Infrastructure funding clause of the Brazilian National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP).

By using Sonardyne’s proprietary optical and acoustic communications technologies, and drawing on its seabed monitoring experience, OD OBN expects to provide a lower cost, more resilient solution for time-lapse seismic and subsidence monitoring of producing reservoirs with better data and the capacity to be placed on the ocean floor for up to five years without human intervention.

The idea is that data from the nodes can be extracted using Sonardyne’s through-water optical communications system to a nearby autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), such as Flatfish developed by Saipem and SENAI CIMATEC, under another ANP-funded program sponsored by Shell and Petrobras.

This latest phase was confirmed by the signing of contracts between SENAI CIMATEC and Petrobras in August 2023 and between Shell, SENAI CIMATEC, and Sonardyne this April, to produce a pilot array of 600 prototype nodes expected to be deployed towards the end of 2025 at a preselected field offshore Brazil.

This pilot array is planned to be manufactured at a newly created pilot plant facility constructed by SENAI CIMATEC at CIMATEC PARK near Salvador in Brazil, which has a design capacity to produce 600 nodes per year. Production is expected to commence later in 2024 and involve the employment of a new workforce that will be recruited mainly from the local area.

“We have been developing the enabling technologies for semi-permanent seabed seismic and subsidence monitoring nodes for over a decade and are therefore naturally delighted that they will soon be used in the world’s first large scale field wide test. Our sincere thanks go to our research partners in Shell, Petrobras and SENAI CIMATEC for supporting this program since its inception several years ago,” said Shaun Dunn, Projects Director at Sonardyne.

Shell and Petrobras have been trialing OD OBN prototypes during conventional OBN seismic campaigns, including at Sapinhoá and Itapu, in over 2,000 meters of water, and plan to take delivery of the pilot array on completion for deployment at a jointly operated offshore field in the pre-salt region to the south of Rio de Janeiro.

“The OD OBN technology will be important in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions during our seismic acquisition operations offshore. Besides that, it will provide a higher level of automation in our seismic field activities which will lead Petrobras and partners to be more efficient in reservoir seismic monitoring processes in the Brazilian pre-salt area,” said Alexandre Silva, Senior Geophysicist Advisor of the Research Centre of Petrobras (CENPES).