b'IndustryNewsoptions for explorers. Do you bank the savings? Or invest these in expanding the survey area? Or do you acquire higher trace density, richer azimuth-offset data in the pursuit of more sophisticated geoscience information like geological inversion, small fault resolution, fracture orientation and fluid properties?Data value optimisation and risk mitigationWe are already seeing how the step-change in onshore seismic data value Figure 2.Lightweight nodes (left) are replacing heavy cable systems (right). is changing the land seismic scene in Australia. Applications of seismic surveys Australian seismic crewswhich areAEGC 2019 paper (Battig et al. 2019),that were considered commercially constrained to a relatively small numberwe describe our work with BHP Coalmarginal or unviable are becoming of people for logistic reasons - theover six 3D surveys to improve vibroseismainstream, such as for open cut coal lightweight nodes enable receiverssource productivity five-fold, usingmines and the structural imaging of to be moved at more than doubleiterative improvements to survey design,gold, nickel sulphide and mineral sand the rate of cable systems and heavysweep parameters and simultaneousdeposits. There is the potential for the nodes. Higher receiver productivitysweep rules (Figure3). During the lastpetroleum sector to gain significant means that simultaneous vibroseisfive years we have been involved invalue from both low cost seismic sweep operations have becomearound twenty high production surveysdata and quantitative interpretation, practical in Australia and this has majorand our survey designs and acquisitionto improve drilling success, field implications for productivity, dataplans have evolved significantly todevelopment and gas recovery. We density and cost/value. optimise overall data acquisitionbelieve there is scope for the value of productivity. Our bespoke projectseismic data to continue to improve Total Seismic has been at the forefront ofoptimisation techniques have beenwith changes to nodes, and that field the movement to use lightweight nodeshighly effective, dramatically increasinglogistics and seismic projects will keep to make onshore seismic explorationproductivity relative to flip-flop seismicdiversifying into time-lapse seismic, more productive, more cost effectivedata acquisition. The productivitypassive seismic, micro-seismic and CO 2and of higher value. In our co-authoredbenefits open up exciting strategicsequestration applications.Figure 3.From left to right: a shallow coal surface mapped from drilling information only; shallow coal surface mapped using 3D seismic data; example showing the difference in fault characterisation using seismic data (top) and only drilling information (bottom) (Battig et al., 2019). Lightweight nodes and simultaneous vibroseis sweep operations have been used to transform the data quality and cost of shallow seismic data in recent years.15 PREVIEW OCTOBER 2020'