On October 10th 2006, the Eastern Spirit arrived in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She stayed berthed until October 12th before moving to a local shipyard for a major conversion. The goal: to convert her into a Q-Marine technology vessel capable of towing up to ten 6-kilometer seismic streamers. She was also to be equipped with DSC - Dynamic Spread Control; this series of unique technologies enables the planning and automated positioning of the vessel, source, and streamers for marine seismic acquisition, as well as quality control and quality assurance of the acquisition deliverables.
There were a lot of challenges in the conversion and the project entailed a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment on behalf of both the offshore and onshore staff. The vessel's back deck had to be literally split and opened up during this major upgrade. Precision project management was the key to success of the project and late Q1 2007 saw the roll-out of newly christened Western Spirit.
Western Spirit had the privilege to perform her first commercial job for StatoilHydro, a large Norwegian integrated oil and gas company, on a 4D project - so DSC was vital to her very first project. The ability of DSC to achieve enormous reductions in source and receiver repeatability errors allows geoscientists to more accurately quantify the movements of hydrocarbons within the reservoir. They are then able to improve the reservoir model, better understand its physical properties, and in time, fine-tune the reservoir production process. DSC is a crucial piece of the Seismic-to-Simulation (542 KB PDF) workflow that Schlumberger is pioneering
This first commercial deployment of DSC was highly successful: ~95% of shots were within 4m of the required cross-line source position as against ~95% within 14m on a baseline 2003 Q survey acquired without DSC.
Becoming and staying successful in today's complex world takes a team effort. It is the interconnected relationships of the Western Spirit offshore and onshore staff with the client, coupled with world beating technology, that will bring long-term rewards to WesternGeco. Western Spirit, the latest addition to the Q-Marine fleet, is up and running!