E&P Plus公司聚焦:地震技术初创公司经历快速增长

STRYDE 首席执行官 Mike Popham 分享了该公司自从 bp 分拆以来所取得的进展的详细信息,以及其新节点技术、2021 年计划和新兴趋势。

提出者:

勘探与生产加

编者注:本文最初发表于 E&P Plus三月号。请在此处 订阅数字出版物  

STRYDE 成立于 2019 年,是一家从 bp 剥离出来的地震技术初创公司。据该公司称,STRYDE 的节点接收器技术是市场上最小的,能够以低成本提供高质量的地下图像。该技术旨在减少环境足迹和 HSE 风险,并提供更快的调查和显着的运营效率。2013年完成首次外场试验,2019年敏捷节点接收机项目实现商业化。

“STRYDE 成立于 2019 年 8 月,其主要目标是让任何行业的客户都能访问高清地震图像,无论这些客户是石油和天然气、地热、CCUS [碳捕获、利用和储存] 、采矿甚至考古,”STRYDE 首席执行官迈克·波帕姆 (Mike Popham) 说。“在 STRYDE 面世之前,很少有行业和公司有能力获得他们所需的地震质量。”

在接受 E&P Plus 独家采访时,Popham 详细介绍了这项新技术和研发方面的其他技术,分享了他对新兴趋势的见解,并谈到了公司 2021 年的计划。


迈克·波帕姆“在整个行业中,要使地震在整个过程中对最终客户来说更具成本效益和时间效率,还有很多工作要做。”Mike Popham,STRYDE


E&P Plus:自 2019 年与 bp 分离以来,STRYDE 取得了哪些成就?

Popham: 十八个月过去了,我们的客户遍布 12 个国家,横跨六个行业(地热、石油和天然气勘探、考古、矿产勘探、微震和地震风险)和四大洲,这证明了我们的目标。随着这种快速发展,我们的团队人数也增加了一倍,达到 7 个国家/地区的超过 47 名员工。

E&P Plus:公司如何度过2020年?

Popham: 与这个市场上的任何其他公司一样,今年是艰难的一年。通常,我们通过将我们的技术带到客户的现场并向他们展示我们的技术与他们习惯的技术相比可以做什么来赢得工作。由于大流行,这些现场试验变得更难安排。COVID-19 还影响了我们展示技术的许多会议和活动,其中许多会议和活动被取消或转向纯数字平台。到目前为止,2020 年我们已成功参加了 6 场在线会议。

然而,即使远程工作,我们仍然能够显着扩大我们的客户群,提供了超过 135,000 个节点。

在油价低迷、上游公司需要仔细考虑运营成本的一年里,我们看到人们对我们的技术产生了浓厚的兴趣,因为这些节点更轻、更便宜、更快比市场上的任何其他产品都要好。

E&P Plus:公司2021年的目标是什么?

Popham: 今年,我们预计市场上将有接近 100 万个 STRYDE 节点,这将释放整个行业的巨大潜力。长期以来,许多运营商已经认识到某些陆地地震采集确实需要这种水平的库存,但它根本不可用。此外,到目前为止,成本状况和 HSSE 风险会让使用这种库存变得令人望而却步。

我们还将显着扩大我们能够产生最大影响的关键地区和行业的客户群。例如,我们 2021 年的一个关键目标是将我们的商业系统引入俄罗斯。我们的技术经过专门设计,可大幅改善一些极端场所的环境影响、速度、成本和安全挑战,因此这将使事情回到原点,将我们现已完全开发的技术带回这些环境。

我们的技术最终与其用例无关。因此,随着石油和天然气行业的公司开始多元化并探索新的领域,例如 CCUS 和地热能,我们将尽一切努力通过高清地震来支持这种多元化。

E&P Plus:您能提供有关您的节点的最新案例研究详细信息吗?

Popham: 我们为 2019 年初研发阶段在阿联酋进行的技术试验感到自豪。这创下了陆地地震道密度的新世界纪录。将我们的节点技术与同步源技术相结合,我们每公里交付了 1.84 亿条轨迹。

正如我们一次又一次地看到,当人们使用我们的系统时,我们以很少的人在地面上快速移动,同时实现了显着的图像提升。用数字来表示,36 名线路人员平均每天工作 6 小时,每天布置 10,000 个节点并回收另外 10,000 个节点。

目前,我们的一位早期客户正在中东与 STRYDE 进行大规模 3D 试验。我们将分享更多相关细节,以及我们很快 [2021 年初] 在其他两个大陆正在进行的类似收购。

斯特莱德
2019 年,STRYDE 技术在阿拉伯联合酋长国进行的试验创下了陆地地震道密度的新世界纪录——每公里 1.84 亿道。(来源:STRYDE)

E&P Plus:您的客户面临的最大挑战是什么?您认为正在发生哪些新兴趋势?

Popham: 过去的一年充满了挑战,从 COVID-19 到疲软的油价。我们还继续看到趋势的出现,我个人认为这是非常积极的。例如,越来越多的公司正在考虑其对环境的影响。尽管人们悲观地认为石油和天然气无能为力,因为该行业本身就会产生排放,但为了减少整个行业的整体环境影响,仍有很多工作可以做。

斯特莱德
(来源:STRYDE)

特别是,我们发现许多参与勘探和油藏开发的公司正在公开挑战或重新考虑过去常见的做法,例如清理林业,为大型地震设备让路。通过 STRYDE 提供每个重量仅为 150 g 的节点,再加上类似灵活源的新兴进步,公司现在不仅能够减少部署地震技术所需的车辆和人员数量,从而更安全、更具成本效益疫情期间的作业还能够大幅减少甚至消除对周边地区林业的负面影响。

许多公司正在积极采取这些举措,以实现更精简、更环保的运营。但随着气候变化继续受到全球各国政府越来越多的关注,我们将开始看到更多的运营商选择更小、更轻的节点,以遵守即将出台的政府法规。

E&P Plus:公司有哪些新技术处于研发阶段?

Popham: 我们为未来一年制定了大量计划。除了我们对被动地震潜在用途的研究之外,我们在创建附加节点变体方面也取得了很大进展,这将补充我们当前的节点,以进一步扩展我们的用户可以实现的目标。

我们还不断努力使我们的系统更快、更轻、更小,因为这对我们运营的每个市场都有好处。我们已经成功地将采集系统缩小到可以轻松安装我们的 NIMBLE 系统和数千个节点的程度进入一个有足够空间的小办公室,甚至在一辆皮卡车的后面,这使得前沿探索比 12 个月前容易得多。尽管如此,我们相信我们可以走得更远。

更广泛地说,我们的研发重点是满足市场上运营商和收购承包商告诉我们的他们的需求。虽然这是一个显而易见的说法,但我们市场上的许多公司并没有这样做。STRYDE 技术本身就是一个很好的例子;多年来,地震技术领域一直听到运营商对更轻、更快、更便宜的节点的同样要求,以便我们能够共同布置更多通道,最终获得卓越的图像,同时减少风险暴露和环境影响。我们将继续坚持这种方法,倾听行业的需求,并与他们合作设计运营商想要的东西,而不是按照他们想要的东西进行小规模、渐进的步骤。

E&P Plus:您认为地震采集和成像的未来在哪里?还可以或需要哪些其他改进?

Popham: 首先,我相信地震成像在各行各业的新应用中存在巨大的未开发潜力。我已经知道,仅 STRYDE 一项就会在 2021 年给至少另外三个工业部门带来震动。我在一月初说过这一点,我预计最终数字会高得多。地震应用方式的扩展对于我们行业的每个人来说都是个好消息。

在过去的一年里,我也有幸测试了其他公司在地震技术领域取得的一些真正令人鼓舞的进步。当好的创新结合在一起时,你可以比任何一种技术本身更进一步地改变行业。

具有挑战性的一面是找到合适的商业模式、合作伙伴和最终客户来整合这些创新并释放我们已经拥有的整体真正潜力。

我还认为探索我们今天能做什么但尚未被广泛利用的事情很重要。例如,不使用主动源的被动地震在一系列应用中具有巨大的潜力。获取它不存在技术障碍,因为大多数节点连续记录,收集大量被动地震数据。有趣的是,在处理过程中,大多数被动数据都被丢弃,人们通常无法回过头来看看他们丢弃了什么。我们已经能够探索如何使用这些数据,现在可以访问各种环境中的大型数据集。我们正在研究通过被动地震收集的有价值信息的潜在水平,并看到了一些非常令人鼓舞的结果。

然而,在整个行业中,为了使地震在整个过程中对最终客户来说更具成本效益和时间效率,仍然需要做很多工作。目前,从开始大规模收购到实际获得有用产品的时间线太长了。

STRYDE 使客户能够显着缩短采集阶段,但即便如此,在地震项目生命周期的其他方面仍有很大潜力提高速度和效率。我们愿意与大大小小的公司合作,他们可以帮助加快整个地震项目的进度。

原文链接/hartenergy

E&P Plus Company Spotlight: Seismic Technology Startup Experiences Rapid Growth

STRYDE CEO Mike Popham shares details about the company’s progress since being spun out of bp as well as its new nodal technology, 2021 plans and emerging trends.

Presented by:

E&P Plus

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the March issue of E&P Plus.
Subscribe to the digital publication here.

Formed in 2019, STRYDE is a seismic technology startup spun out of bp. STRYDE’s node receiver technology is the smallest on the market and delivers high-quality subsurface images at a low cost, according to the company. The technology is designed to reduce environmental footprint and HSE risk as well as provide faster surveys and significant operational efficiencies. The first field trial was completed in 2013, and in 2019 the nimble node receiver project was commercialized.

“STRYDE was set up in August 2019 with a primary goal in mind—enabling clients in any industry to access high-definition seismic images, whether those clients are in oil and gas, geothermal, CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage], mining or even archaeology,” STRYDE CEO Mike Popham said. “Until STRYDE was available, very few industries and companies could afford to acquire the quality of seismic they needed.”

In an exclusive interview with E&P Plus, Popham went into detail about this new technology and others in R&D, shared his insight on emerging trends and spoke about the company’s 2021 plans.


Mike Popham“Across the sector, there is still so much that needs to be done to make seismic even more cost-effective and time-efficient for the end client throughout the process.”— Mike Popham, STRYDE


E&P Plus: What has STRYDE accomplished since separating from bp in 2019?

Popham: Eighteen months on, we have clients in 12 countries, spanning six industries (geothermal, oil and gas exploration, archaeology, mineral exploration, microseismic and seismic risk) and four continents, proving that we were onto something. With this rapid take-up, we’ve also doubled our team to more than 47 employees across seven countries.

E&P Plus: How was the company able to navigate through 2020?

Popham: Like any other company in this market, it’s been a difficult year to get through. Normally, we win work by bringing our technology to clients’ sites and showing them what our technology can do compared to what they are used to. With the pandemic, those in-person trials have been harder to arrange. COVID-19 has also affected a lot of the conferences and events where we would showcase our technology, with many cancelled or shifting to digital-only platforms. So far, we’ve managed to participate in six online conferences over 2020.

However, even working remotely, we have still been able to significantly grow our client base, with more than 135,000 nodes supplied.

In a year when oil prices have been on the downturn and upstream companies need to think carefully about their operating costs, we’ve seen this kind of major interest in our technology due to the simple fact that these nodes are lighter, cheaper and faster than anything else on the market.

E&P Plus: What are the company’s goals for 2021?

Popham: This year, we expect to have close to 1 million STRYDE nodes on the market, which unlocks huge potential across the industry. For a long time, many operators have recognized that certain land seismic acquisitions really require this level of inventory, but it simply hasn’t been available. Furthermore, until now, the cost profile and HSSE risks would have made using such an inventory prohibitive.

We will also significantly grow our client base in key regions and industries where we can make the biggest impact. For example, one key goal for us in 2021 is to bring our commercial systems into Russia. Our technology was tailored to drastically improve the environmental impact, pace, cost and safety challenges in some of their extreme sites, so this will bring things full circle to bring our now fully developed technology back to these environments.

Our technology is ultimately agnostic to its use-case. So as companies across the oil and gas industry start to diversify and explore new sectors, such as CCUS and geothermal energy, we will do whatever we can to support this diversification with high-definition seismic.

E&P Plus: Can you provide any recent case study details on your nodes?

Popham: We’re proud of a trial of our technology in UAE [United Arab Emirates], which was conducted during the R&D phase in early 2019. This set a new world record for land seismic trace density. Combining our nodal technology, with simultaneous source technology, we delivered 184 million traces per kilometer.

As we see time and time again when people use our systems, we achieved a significant image uplift while moving rapidly over the ground with very few people. To put that in numbers, a line crew of 36 people working on average 6 hours per day were laying out 10,000 nodes and retrieving another 10,000 nodes per day.

Right now, one of our early clients is conducting a large-scale 3D trial with STRYDE in the Middle East. We will share more details on this, and similar acquisitions we have ongoing in two other continents soon [in early 2021].

STRYDE
A 2019 trial of STRYDE technology in the United Arab Emirates set a new world record for land seismic trace density—184 million traces per kilometer. (Source: STRYDE)

E&P Plus: What is the biggest challenge your clients are facing? What emerging trends do you see taking place?

Popham: The past year has been inundated with challenges, from COVID-19 to weak oil prices. We’re also continuing to see trends emerging, which personally I think are very positive. For example, more and more companies are considering their environmental impact. While there is a pessimistic perception that there is nothing oil and gas can do as the industry inherently results in emissions, there is still so much that can be done to reduce overall environmental impact across the whole sector.

STRYDE
(Source: STRYDE)

In particular, we’ve found that many companies involved in exploration and reservoir development are openly challenging or reconsidering practices that used to be commonplace, such as line-clearing of forestry to make way for bulky seismic equipment. With STRYDE providing nodes that weigh just 150 g each, coupled with emerging advances for similarly nimble sources, companies are now able to not only reduce the number of vehicles and personnel needed to lay out seismic technology—and thereby safer, more cost-effective operations during pandemic times—they’re also able to drastically reduce and even eliminate any negative impact on the surrounding area’s forestry.

A number of companies are proactively making these moves toward leaner, more environmentally friendly operations proactively. But as climate change continues to gain more and more focus from governments across the globe, we will start to see even more operators opting for smaller, lighter nodes to stay compliant with incoming government regulations.

E&P Plus: Does the company have any new technologies in the R&D phase?

Popham: We have a huge amount planned for the year ahead. In addition to our research into the potential uses of passive seismic, we are well advanced in our creation of an additional node variant, which will supplement our current node to further extend what our users can achieve.

We also constantly strive to make our system even faster, lighter and smaller because this benefits any and every market we operate in. We have already managed to scale down an acquisition system to the point that you can comfortably fit our NIMBLE system and several thousand nodes into a small office with plenty of space to spare or even in the back of a pickup truck, which makes frontier exploration far easier than it was 12 months ago. Despite this, we believe we can go even further.

More broadly, our R&D is focused on meeting what operators and acquisition contractors in the market tell us that they need. Whilst that’s an obvious statement, it’s not something that many companies in our market do. The STRYDE technology itself is a good example of this; for many years, the seismic technology sector heard the same requests for lighter, faster, significantly cheaper nodes from operators so that together we could lay out more channels and ultimately get a superior image whilst in parallel, reducing risk exposure and environmental impact. We will continue to stick with this approach, listening to the demands of the industry and designing what operators want in collaboration with them, rather than producing small, incremental steps of what they want.

E&P Plus: Where do you see the future of seismic acquisition and imaging? What other improvements can be made or are needed?

Popham: Firstly, I believe that there is huge untapped potential to use seismic imaging for new applications across a range of industries. I already know that STRYDE alone will bring seismic to at least three further industrial sectors in 2021. And where I’m saying this in early January, I expect the end figure will be far higher. This expansion of how seismic is used is good news for everyone in our industry.

Over the past year, I have also been fortunate to test some really encouraging advances in the seismic technology sector from other companies. When good innovations are combined, you can transform the industry further than any one technology can on its own.

The challenging side is finding the right commercial models, partnerships and end customers to integrate these innovations and unlock the overall true potential we all have available to us already.

I also think it’s important to explore what we can do today but isn’t yet being widely utilized. For example, passive seismic, where an active source isn’t utilized, has huge potential for a range of applications. There isn’t a technology barrier to acquiring it as most nodes record continuously, collecting large quantities of passive seismic data. What’s interesting is that when it comes to processing, most of these passive data are discarded, and people aren’t often able to come back to see what they’ve thrown away. We’ve been able to explore how these data can be used and now have access to a large dataset across a huge range of environments. We are researching the potential level of valuable information that can be gathered by passive seismic and are seeing some very encouraging results.

Across the sector, however, there is still so much that needs to be done to make seismic even more cost-effective and time-efficient for the end client throughout the process. At the moment, the timeline from starting a large acquisition and actually accessing useful products is far, far too long.

STRYDE allows a client to significantly cut down the acquisition phase, but even then, there’s so much potential to improve speed and efficiency elsewhere in the life cycle of a seismic project. We’re open to collaborating with companies, big and small, who can help accelerate the whole seismic project timeline.