Searcher Seismic is utilizing seismic data for the oil and gas industry providing a map to de-risk exploration

Searcher Seismic is utilizing seismic data for the oil and gas industry providing a map to de-risk exploration

In today’s age of technology, the processing of seismic data requires powerful computers, talented researchers, software, and skills.  For the Oil and Gas Industry, its paramount to making strategic business decisions. Seismic data accurately helps to plan for wells, reduce the need for further exploration, and minimizes the impact on the environment.  

The Oil and Gas industry utilizes seismic surveys to produce detailed images from rock types, and their location beneath the surface, to determine the location and size of both oil and gas reservoirs.  This is accomplished by bouncing soundwaves off underground rock formations and the waves that reflect back to the surface are captured by recording sensors. Analyzing the time the waves take to return provides valuable information about rock types and possible gases or fluids in these formations. 

Searcher Seismic is an independent multi-client company, headquartered in Western Australia, that provides high quality, non-exclusive subsurface datasets to the global Oil & Gas industry. Searcher’s leading edge data sets are used by their customers to de-risk their exploration portfolios in a cost-effective manner. Searchers’ vision is to be the global multi-client company most admired for its commitment to quality products, mutually beneficial partnerships and total customer satisfaction.  

Seismic data is the principal geophysical method used to image the subsurface in both land and marine environments.  

Efficient exploration with less impact on the environment

Searcher Seismic is utilizing the data for the Oil and Gas industry providing a map to de-risk exploration.  For any company, like Searcher, combing through a library of 20PB of data can be time-consuming and extremely costly, as it is a very labor-intensive process.  Current data management practices are prone to human error and often require physical media transcription or handling before the data is even accessible. Data delivery to clients was also becoming a growing problem.

Searcher Seismic turned to Cloudera’s technology stack and Professional Services team to achieve their goals. This has enabled the company to build a new product offering, Saismic™. This cloud-based service provides global seismic data on-demand with native support for deep learning and advanced analytics. The company implemented a hybrid cloud approach  with a high speed fibre link to a cluster in the data center, which has direct links to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. 

Transforming big data with machine learning and Artificial intelligence

As machine learning becomes more widely adopted in the Oil and Gas industry, the need for organized data with known provenance and usage rights has never been greater. The majority of currently available seismic data is fraught with challenges, ranging from legacy file formats and inconsistent metadata to dynamic range problems. Saismic™ solves these problems by collecting, standardizing and storing seismic data on a modern big data infrastructure. With support for cloud, on premises and hybrid deployment models, Saismic™ can be streamed anywhere, anytime, and to any system.

Allowing data access, seamlessly and efficiently across the entire organization is critical. Now Searcher employees can view all data which is available immediately via a web portal, and with access based upon verified login credentials. For clients, data delivery was a two-step process that started once a contract was signed. Key data was shipped within 24 hours, with the remainder following in 2 weeks.  Now, from the moment the contract is signed, the data can be pushed to the client’s cloud vendor of choice, allowing instant access to data.

Searcher Seismic also used Cloudera’s professional services team for their machine learning and data science expertise, implementation of the enterprise data platform, and the design including a training pipeline. Professional services were instrumental and came in with experts to provide all of this before Searchers team took over.

For more customer use cases, please visit: https://www.cloudera.com/about/customers.html

Diana Yanez-Pastor
Director, Customer Marketing
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