Using WinWedge and
GPS to search for natural resources under the ocean floor.
Austin Exploration Inc., headquartered in Houston, Texas,
conducts GPS-based high-resolution land and marine gravity
and magnetic surveys throughout the world. Their surveys and
associated interpretations have proven to be invaluable to
the oil and gas industries worldwide. Austin Exploration’s
surveys are also beneficial to the mining industry in its
search for gold, silver, iron, zinc, lead and diamonds.
Austin Exploration has conducted nonexclusive regional land
studies in the United States, beginning in the Cordilleran
Hingeline Thrust Belt in Utah. Other nonexclusive areas of
study include the Appalachian area, the Ouachita Trend in
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Nonexclusive
marine projects include most of the Gulf of Mexico and offshore
Alaska, east and west coasts of North America, Sulawesi, Indonesia,
Timor Sea and several surveys offshore United Kingdom.
Austin Exploration began their land survey operations in
1976, and in 1979 expanded their operations to include marine
services. Shipboard systems have been employed in offshore
South America, Africa, Pacific Rim countries, Europe, the
coastal regions of North America, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea,
Vietnam and Burma.
Marine Surveys
To perform underwater gravity surveys and locate oil and
gas beneath the floor of the ocean, Austin Exploration uses
a ship equipped with advanced instrumentation to check below
the ocean floor for minute differences in the earth’s gravitational
field. These changes in the earth’s gravitational field indicate
a change in density in the subsurface, and correspondingly,
the presence of various structures including salt domes, anticlines
(folds with layers of sedimentary rock sloping downward on
both sides from a common crest), reefs, etc. By rigorously
analyzing these changes in gravitational field, structures
are precisely located implying the existence of oil fields.
Austin Exploration makes use of the most advanced marine
surveying instrumentation including Digital Marine Gravity
Meters and GPS Receivers, both with RS232 output. The marine
gravity field meters are the latest in shipboard gravity technology
manufactured by LaCoste and Romberg Laboratories, out of Austin,
TX. The series 4000 GPS Receiver is manufactured by Trimble,
from Sunnyvale, CA (800-827-8000, www.trimble.com). Since
both instruments offer RS232 output, they are easily connected
directly to a PC with a serial cable. Connecting the instruments
to a PC offers complete automation of the survey data.
PC Configuration
The gravity information is recorded along with the GPS-based
navigational information to accurately map density changes
in the substructure beneath the ocean floor. To accomplish
this the gravity information is fed into the PC over the PCs
serial port 2 while a GPS Receiver is hooked up to serial
port 3. The GPS Receiver accurately tracks the ship’s location
relative to satellites in orbit around the earth.
Hence exact location and gravity information,
from com 3 and com 2, must be simultaneously plotted into
a Microsoft
Excel spreadsheet. This is achieved using the WinWedge Pro
from TALtech (800-722-6004, www.taltech.com).
This software interfaces both the gravity
meter and the GPS Receiver simultaneously and parses and
filters the data and sends it to the correct locations in
a Microsoft
Excel (v7.0) spreadsheet. The spreadsheet then automatically
graphs the information.
They are
using an add-in 4 channel serial port board (Digiboard PC
4) by Digi International (800-344-4273) to allow for connection
to additional serial ports.
Before they discovered WinWedge, researchers at Austin Exploration
were using ProComm to simply dump the incoming serial data
from the navigation equipment to a disk file. WinWedge allowed
them more control over parsing, filtering and formatting their
serial data and sending it in real time to their Excel spreadsheet.
WinWedge also allowed them to collect data simultaneously
from different instruments on different serial ports.
The digital marine gravity meters outputs binary serial data
that is converted to decimal in the WinWedge before it is
transferred to Excel. The GPS Receiver transmits serial ASCII
data. As this is already decimal form, it can be easily transferred
by WinWedge into Excel.
Benefits
- Simultaneous data collection from two different instruments
(GPS Receiver and Gravity Meter).
- Ability to plot real-time location versus gravity data
in Excel to locate natural resources below the ocean floor.
- Cost effective.
- Very Easy to set up and use.
- Ensures complete data accuracy.
Conclusion
The results, which are collected in Excel in real time, help
define subsurface structures believed to be prospective hydrocarbon
accumulations (i.e. oil). Automating the collection of the
survey data provides 100% accuracy and quality control of
the data while at sea.
TAL Technologies, Inc.
2101 Brandywine Street,
Suite 102,
Philadelphia, PA 19130, USA
Tel: 800-722-6004
Tel: 215-496-0222
Fax: 215-496-0322
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