Recon 3D – A Fast and Cheap 3D Acquisition Approach to Large Scale Exploration

In deep-water environments, energy companies are exploring increasingly subtle plays, in ever shorter time frames, to discover commercial hydrocarbon volumes. Advances in deep-water drilling and completions, subsea equipment and facilities technology underpin many of the recent commercially successful deep-water developments; exploration seismic advancements lagged those in engineering. In deep-water frontier environments, seismic stratigraphic and structural interpretation, in addition to hydrocarbon system and regional analyses, obviously are key components of prospect evaluation and risking leading to successful exploration and development programs. Clear business need provides an opportunity for more cost effective seismic acquisition technology. This paper introduces the novel RECONnaissance 3D marine seismic acquisition method that provides the spatial and temporal resolution of conventional marine 3D seismic, but at a significantly reduced cost. RECON 3D is an ideal method for acquiring deep water seismic data to explore large areas, to upgrade separately or previously acquired azimuthally restricted data, or to acquire fast-track data covering numerous fields, prospects, or leads.