Rapid autonomous marine 4D (RAM4D): Unmanned time-lapse seismic acquisition

We present recent work developing an autonomous, unmanned marine seismic source system for 4D reservoir surveillance, called Rapid Autonomous Marine 4D (RAM4D). RAM4D will target permanent receiver technologies such as Ocean Bottom Cables (OBC) or Distributed Acoustic Sensing Vertical Seismic Profiles (DAS VSP). These Permanent Reservoir Monitoring (PRM) systems are good candidates for monitoring with lower-cost sources due to their low 4D noise, and have the potential for high impact from OPEX reductions in the source effort. We lay out our vision for the RAM4D system and the benefits to such a technology implementation, primarily low-cost, frequent or on-demand, small footprint 4D surveys causing lower environmental exposure, and unmanned operations leading to improved safety. We present the results of a RAM4D inshore field trial testing vessel operations, and plans to test a production scale, fully equipped vessel to acquire a 4D seismic dataset.