Shearwater extends deepwater survey off India’s coast

Norway’s marine geoscience and technology player Shearwater GeoServices has secured a contract extension of the “major” deepwater ocean bottom node (OBN) survey off the coast of India.

Shearwater has extended its project with India’s government-owned energy giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) after completing the initial six-month phase using the SW Tasman vessel, designed for seismic source and dual ROV operations, along with the in-house developed Pearl node. 

During this phase, the Norwegian company said it had set new industry benchmarks by deploying and recovering many nodes daily, even in challenging conditions and water depths between 100 and 2,900 meters.

“Our operation in India has delivered an impressive performance, confirming the significant operational efficiencies enabled by Shearwater’s unique vessel design and the state-of-the-art Pearl node technology. We look forward to extending this important project with our client and further add to their successful data acquisition programme this season,” said Irene Basili, the CEO of Shearwater.

The Pearl node is of small size and low weight which allows wider and denser spreads reducing operational time by a third compared with current deployments, Shearwater said.

The wireless node is said to be flexible and can be used in deep and shallow water depths. It may be applied across a range of activities, from exploration and production seismic data to capturing geophysical data for carbon storage and in new energy markets.

In terms of Shearwater’s other recent activities with ONGC, the Norwegian company was hired in February to conduct a 3D seismic survey assignment off the east coast of India.