Oil & Gas Fracture Monitoring Using Seismometers

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The oil and gas industry has been transformed recently due to the discovery of large untappedreservoirs containing ‘unconventional’ oil and gas. These resources are located in non-porousrock where the oil and gas flows extremely slowly, making the reservoirs uneconomic toproduce. Production has been made economic by creating thousands of fractures in the rockthat allow the oil to flow.Due to environmental concerns, including contamination of ground water and generatingsmall earthquakes, many fracturing process are now monitored. Legislation in some countriesrequires monitoring and this is rapidly spreading to further countries. Both geophones andseismometers are used in oil and gas exploration, but currently only geophones are used forfracture monitoring. We believe that the use of seismometers for oil and gas fracturemonitoring is innovative and that there may be a considerable market opportunity due to theadvantages seismometers provide over geophones.The objective of our project is to investigate the commercial viability of a service to monitoroil and gas fracturing operations using seismometers. We will evaluate this opportunity byengaging with stakeholders in the market including oil operators, oil service companies andfracturing operators. We will also characterise the competition and speak with regulatorybodies and industry experts. We aim to generate 5 year financial projections for this marketopportunity. To achieve this we will define our target pricing and quantify the investmentrequired to design and procure the equipment required to deliver this innovative service.