Oil industry executives are facing a big problem and are scrambling to find a solution. Their ability to perform seismic surveys (their only viable means of finding and monitoring the production of offshore oil and gas) is being seriously threatened.
In a February 2014 Environmental Impact Study Final Report, the U.S. Department of Interior concluded that the legacy airguns in use today are the cause of massive injuries, disruptions and disturbances to marine life and environment. In March 2015, 75 leading ocean scientists from the US and around the world sent a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider his approval of oil and gas exploration using seismic airguns off the US Atlantic coast, exploring for potential offshore oil & gas from Delaware to Florida. They claim that the harm from seismic blasting will be significant and long-lasting for large populations of marine life. Similarly, in June 2013 a landmark legal settlement to protect Gulf of Mexico whales and dolphins from industry’s high-intensity airgun surveys was reached between a coalition of conservation groups, the federal government and oil industry representatives. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, a multi-year research and development project is to be undertaken, to develop and field test an alternative to airguns.
During these surveys, seismic sources—airguns—generate sound waves into the ocean that are powerful enough to penetrate the ocean’s subsurface. The reflected energy is detected and used to develop images of the subsurface. (This is essentially a much larger scale version of the sonogram commonly used to image babies in the womb.) Without these surveys, oil companies may as well rely upon dowsers using twigs as divining rods to locate oil and gas deposits. In fact, prior to the advent of 3D seismic imaging, 7-10 dry holes were drilled for every successful producing well. With 3D seismic imaging, dry holes are now rare. With the typical $25M cost of an offshore well, dry holes can be expensive.
Realizing their dilemma, the oil industry has shelled out millions of dollars to many companies to develop an alternative to the air gun–a marine vibrator–yet despite the millions spent, none of these alternatives have been able to meet their requirements.
Compared to other offshore oil and gas activities, seismic exploration using airguns produces some of the loudest underwater sounds.
Since airguns replaced dynamite (which was outlawed in the 1960s) as the primary marine seismic source, there has been little progress made on improved alternative seismic sources—that is, until now. GreenPowerUSA (GPUSA) has developed a new line of marine and downhole seismic sources for the oil industry’s$650 billion exploration and production industry. GPUSA’s marine vibrator is designed to replace the traditional seismic source (air guns). GPUSA’s marine vibrator creates vibrations instead of explosions and will enable better imaging, generate less harm to the environment/marine life, and do so at a substantially lower cost than the legacy technology. GPUSA believes its new marine vibrator seismic source is the only marine vibrator that can meet the oil industry’s published requirements.
The time is now for a marine vibrator that is smaller, more powerful, more reliable, less expensive, that will require less maintenance. GPUSA’s patent-pending marine vibrator does exactly that. Using state-of-the-art factory automation and programmable logic technology, our new marine vibrator seismic source is capable of producing vibrations and sound far beyond the capabilities of traditional acoustic devices, while minimizing unnecessary out of band signals that can potentially harm marine life.
GPUSA has already designed, built and conducted successful tests of its new seismic sources at its own in-house test lab and at US Department of Energy test sites. This was done in the first half of 2015. Additionally, field tests with two of the world’s largest oilfield service companies are scheduled for the early 2016.
Recognizing the need for protecting our newly developed technology, and to maximize the company’s value, GPUSA has filed multiple provisional patent applications and a utility patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We have also filed for and have been granted a trademark for the term “Distributed Seismic Source’ with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In October 2015, GPUSA formally introduced our first two products at the SEG Annual Exposition in New Orleans, which is the largest oil and gas seismic exploration and production trade show. Representatives from the world’s major oil companies including Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobil, Total, Saudi Aramco, and Statoil in addition to many others sought GPUSA out and indicated much interest in our products. All acknowledged the need for a simpler, more reliable solution and GPUSA is currently in discussions with most of them.
Jim Andersen began his career as Engineering Officer on U.S. Navy nuclear submarines. Upon leaving the Navy he went on to hold a variety of technical and senior management positions in high technology companies including Westinghouse, Litton Industries, and Northrop Grumman.
Jim has over 26 years of hands-on experience developing high technology systems for the DOD and private industry. At Litton, he led the company’s fastest growing business unit, and was directly responsible for landing a contract valued at over $450M to put advanced fiber optic sonar systems on all of the US Navy’s newest fast attack nuclear submarines. In his most recent experience, Jim founded US Seismic Systems in 2007, which was eventually acquired by Acorn Energy in 2010, publicly trading on NASDAQ. He served as the CEO of US Seismic Systems until July 2014. A recognized expert in underwater sound, sonar, and seismic sensing, Jim has authored articles in all of the leading Oil & Gas magazines, and in 2013 was called on to provide expert testimony before the US Congress on the potential benefits of using seismic monitoring of the controversial hydrofracking process.
Jim founded GPUSA Inc. in August of 2014, recognizing the oil industry’s need for seismic sources that were less damaging to the environment and believing that the technical approaches pursued by the industry leaders were not practical.
Luis has over 25 years of experience in the testing and development of high technology products for both the oilfield and the aerospace industries. As a Test and Field Engineer he works not only in the laboratory testing and checking out equipment but also has been responsible for taking products into the field to verify that they work under actual real world conditions.
A Six Sigma Green Belt with a degrees in Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics & Lasers, Luis has been involved in the design and testing of precision navigation instrument technology including high vacuum systems, fiber optic gyroscopes and accelerometers, electronic board test/troubleshooting, and silicon wafer processing. As a Field Engineer he has travelled the world supervising field support personnel in the planning, setup, installation and deployment of fiber optic seismic sensors and arrays in the oilfield as well as high technology security systems at government facilities in the US, Mexico and Canada. He has worked at Litton Industries, Northrop Grumman, and US Seismic Systems.