STRYDE partners with Explor and Carbon Management Canada to demonstrate how new seismic technology can mitigate current CCUS development challenges and enable ongoing monitoring via high density seismic acquisition.

Pioneering seismic technology provider STRYDE’s nodes were used in conjunction with Explor PinPoint technology to achieve a new global record in land seismic trace density at the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) Field Research Station, the company said on June 2.

STRYDE, Explor and CMC are collaborating to demonstrate the suitability of these ground-breaking technologies for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project development and monitoring. 

In this field test, STRYDE, Explor and CMC are demonstrating how STRYDE’s Nodes—the lightest, fastest, and most cost effective on the market—in combination with Explor’s market-leading PinPoint source can be used to map out and monitor the subsurface for CO2 injection without the need for clearing the area or compromising on data quality. The 1 sq km field test has delivered a new world record of over 256 million traces / sq km.

This record was achieved by a field team of only ten people, demonstrating the agility of both the STRYDE Nodes and the PinPoint source system. A single two-person team was consistently able to layout up to 1,000 nodes in a day.

Climate models indicate a critical role for CCUS in climate mitigation efforts. The most recent Sustainable Development Scenario by the International Energy Agency attributes 15% of cumulative emissions reduction to CCUS. However, despite current investment in CCUS and significant projected growth, experts say the rate of development for CCUS projects is still not on track to keep emissions below international targets.

There is also growing stakeholder and investor pressure on the fossil energy industry to drive down emissions. Technologies that reduce the cost of CCUS development and monitoring will help these companies to support new growth in total CCUS capacity and thereby achieve net zero emissions targets.

Subsurface monitoring is critical to the secure operation of any CCUS facility, but faces several challenges, including cost and space. As storage projects are usually built near existing infrastructure, subsurface image quality is hampered by the constraints of costly and cumbersome legacy seismic acquisition technology and methods. As a result, many previous CCUS projects have struggled to produce high quality subsurface imaging due to the wide spacing between seismic nodes and constraints over source positioning.

“As a business, we are committed to the rapid and collaborative development of exceptional and accessible high-definition seismic solutions,” Mike Popham, CEO of STRYDE, said. “We believe that CCUS has a huge role in enabling the world to tackle global CO2 levels. Put simply, we are making high density seismic acquisition accessible for CCUS developers, which will help drive the uptake of this crucial technology.”

In this field test, STRYDE’s Nodes and Explor’s source are being trialed against alternative monitoring technologies, such as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) and other geophone products, with the final dataset to be compared to a previous 3D survey that was undertaken using a conventional seismic layout with a buggy-mounted vibratory source.