TDI-Brooks wraps up seabed coring project for Suriname’s national oil company

U.S.-based TDI-Brooks International, contracted by GeoPartners, has finalized a seabed survey project for Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname, the country’s national oil company.

According to TDI-Brooks, the Suriname Seabed Piston Coring project involved the acquisition, processing, and interpretation of seep data, encompassing multibeam and coring operations over a 45,000 square kilometer area on the Suriname continental shelf.

Utilizing the vessel RV GYRE, the campaign unfolded in two phases: geophysical and geochemical. The geophysical phase, conducted from July to October, focused on multibeam echosounder (MBES) acquisition, backscatter analysis, and plume detection.

The geochemical phase, from October to November, added sub-bottom profiler surveys and core sampling, with a 1-kilometer chirp sub-bottom profiler line acquired at each core site, TDI-Brookes noted. In total, the company recovered 60 SGE cores and seven heat flow samples, yielding several hydrocarbon indicators.

“Another successful acquisition completed. Thank you to all crew and support staff involved,” said Ben Sayers, Partner at GeoPartners. Ron Daniel, Geoscience Advisor for Staatsolie’s Exploration team, added: “Thank you for a safely and well-executed project, done in collaboration with all the stakeholders. We look forward to the geochemical results.”

The RV GYRE is equipped for advanced seep-hunting operations, featuring a newly installed Kongsberg EM-304 (1×1) hull-mounted MBES system and an Edgetech HM3300 Chirp sub-bottom profiler, TDI-Brooks said. Its capabilities include geotechnical and geochemical coring, heat flow sampling, and cone penetration testing (CPT).

Following the offshore campaign, geochemical analyses will be conducted at TDI-Brooks’ laboratories in College Station, Texas. Screening analysis will focus on interstitial carbon gases (C1-C5 hydrocarbons and CO2), total scanning fluorescence (TSF), and C15+ gas chromatography. Cores with seepage evidence will undergo further isotopic and biomarker analysis to assess the hydrocarbon system’s characteristics.

“Seep hunting surveys have been based on the observation that migrated petroleum from deep source rocks and reservoirs can be analytically detected or otherwise proxied as thermogenic seepage in near-surface soils and sediments, such that results can be used to help evaluate a prospective petroleum system,” explained Bernie Bernard, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of TDI-Brooks.

“The value of survey results has been aided by the evolution of tools and techniques for site selection, sample collection, lab analysis, and interpretation, resulting in our growing ability to determine charge, age, maturity, depositional environment, and even oil quality from the detected seepage.”

In September, Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Petrobras to enhance collaboration in various aspects of the energy arena.

In a related development, Norway’s subsea services provider Argeo signed an eight-year agreement in November with Staatsolie for the acquisition, processing, and sales of multi-client data in Suriname.