Application of Q-Marine Technology to Offshore Hydrocarbon Exploration

Many problems might occur with conventional 3D seismic survey, such as synchronization error of air gun firing, strong noise in hydrophone during acquisition, and difficult maintenance of constant space between streamers in bed sea state. The Q-Marine technology developed by WesternGeco can solve these problems effectively. Using seismic source calibration technology, the consistency of source signal between different shootings can be improved. Using single hydrophone to record raw seismic signal separately in acquisition (In traditional streamer, the seismic signal of a channel is the average value of a group of hydrophones), and then by proper processing, both signal/noise ratio and resolution of the final seismic data can been improved. In Q-Marine technology, the streamers are equipped with full-scale integrated acoustic positioning networks. This can greatly improve the accuracy of streamer positioning. The Q-Fin technology in Q-Marine can effectively adjust the lateral distance between streamers. In this paper, an over-all introduction on Q-Marine acquisition technology has been discussed, and actual seismic acquisition examples with Q-Marine technology have been analyzed.