Page 14: of Marine Technology Magazine (October 2020)

Insights

SEISMIC and CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud

Computing –

The Next Big Bang for Seismic © pickup/AdobeStock

By Bill Shea, CEO, Sharp Re? ections t is premature to analyze or try to pre- drive real change in terms of how seis- be manually uploaded to the company’s dict what the ? nal impact of Covid-19 mic data is processed and delivered to expensive inhouse data storage infra- will be on the wider seismic ecosys- oil companies. structure. For pre-stack data sets, this is

Item at this early point in the crisis. Covid-19 has already disrupted nor- still done using physical media. It can

However, we can make some educated mal work? ows and processes. With still take weeks (or months) for a new guesses. Ongoing projects that are gen- companies across the globe embracing order to reach the interpreters worksta- erating new data will continue, unless remote working out of necessity, it is tion – delaying the analysis work.

pre-commitments are cancelled. Some clear that we are not going back to how Huge public clouds, such as Amazon new projects that are “ready to sail”, things were before. Covid-19 has creat- Web Services and Microsoft Azure, such as PGS’ new Geostreamer X multi- ed a vacuum, creating opportunities for will almost certainly disrupt seismic azimuth marine seismic survey in the new processes and technologies to show delivery. New ? eld data will go di-

North Sea, will also go forward. Most their value. Disruption can be an impe- rectly to cloud computers for process- upcoming projects still in the planning tus for change, and a natural result is ing, allowing large-scale data projects stage will be postponed or otherwise that the seismic sector will use this time to be shared instantly from vendor to delayed. This is the result of a natural to restructure and evaluate to ensure its company, effectively jump starting the reigning in of spend that happens when long-term survival. interpretation program. Provided data shock waves hit the sector. analysis also transitions to cloud-based

Future proo? ng the seismic market software, real advantages exist for the

Disruption a driver for change The oil and gas sector is often slow seismic customer. This requires wides-

The seismic sector was poised for to adopt new habits. Remote access to cale adoption of cloud technology by some change ahead of Covid-19, with technical computing is a relatively new both oil companies and vendors.

seismic vendors announcing plans trend. After Covid-19, the transition will to migrate a percentage of their data have to happen quicker. Today, seismic Why is cloud the likely trend of

Covid-19?

processing to the cloud in 2020. This delivery is a slow approach requiring was the start of a new but incremental the vendors to transmit large data ? les Covid-19 has resulted in companies approach, which would take years to to oil companies, which in turn need to across all sectors and countries taking 14 October 2020

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