A comparative field trial of a new nimble node and cabled systems in a desert environment

BP, in collaboration with Rosneft and Schlumberger, have developed and tested a new nodal system (Manning et al, 2018) designed to enable unlimited channel count acquisition across all land environments, whether for high trace density or large coverage seismic surveys. To achieve these goals, the system offers the smallest and lightest fully autonomous node for land seismic acquisition, barely bigger than a conventional geophone, making it the preferred candidate to replace existing bulky cabled systems. In this field trial we designed and executed several 2D seismic surveys using three commercial cabled systems side-by-side with the new nodal system and carried out rigorous comparisons between the four systems on important aspects of seismic acquisition and processing. Results show that single sensor systems produce better images and offer more flexibility in processing than arrays, and that the new nimble node in particular delivers an indistinguishable trace-to-trace quality from conventional systems without the costly operational constrains imposed by cable systems.