Emerging sensing technologies for hydrocarbons and their potential use as exploration devices

Abstract

Australian waters contain a number of under-explored offshore sedimentary basins, which have or could have significant hydrocarbon accumulations. Current exploration strategies are based primarily upon seismic data acquisition, with other data type acquisition, (e.g. geochemical sampling) requiring further survey cruises. This multiple survey strategy significantly increases exploration costs leading to tough decisions being made upon which surveys to perform when exploration budgets are tight. The attraction of using a single cruise to achieve multiple surveys is therefore of interest in reducing costs and increasing the impact of each exploration dollar.