Seismic imaging
Extracting oil would be simple if it were found in huge underground lakes. However it’s always more complicated than that. Hydrocarbons are held in porous rocks like water in a sponge, often in concentrations that are broken up and spread across a large area, making them difficult to find and produce.
Seismic surveys are the most powerful tool that exists to understand what’s going on beneath the surface. First used in the 1920s, the technology employs sound waves that reflect from underground rock layers, allowing us to see into the earth. Back then dynamite charges generated the sound and a few detectors captured reflected waves. The recorded data helped create simple two-dimensional maps.
Today sophisticated measuring techniques, combined with powerful computers, create very high-resolution 3D images to reveal the features of a reservoir in more detail. Advanced imaging software helps Shell’s geophysicists process huge quantities of seismic data and filter out distortions caused by underground obstacles such as layers of salt and volcanic rock. They obscure the location of oil by interfering with the direction and velocity of reflected sound waves.
Using Shell’s 12 interconnected virtual reality centres around the world, geologists and engineers in different locations can simultaneously study and discuss the same 3D image, which appears to float in the air in front of a large, curved screen. The result of this real-time collaboration is faster and more accurate decisions about how to develop a reservoir.
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