Tetra Tech’s seismic acquisition and processing team delivered geophysical support of field operations for the Shell BC-10 Life of Field project offshore Brazil, ensuring consistency and knowledge retention throughout the seismic projects.
BC-10 is one of the significant milestones in the development and commercialisation of Brazil’s deep-water oil. This project was distinct among seismic operations as it involved a permanent reservoir monitoring system.
The seismic sensor cable array was installed on the seafloor in 2013 with the intent of monitoring the life of the BC-10 field with successive short-duration seismic source programs. This design streamlines the process of higher generation acquisition by removing the need for receiver deployment and recovery time and guaranteeing consistency of receiver positions by leaving the cables in their original location on the seabed. The seismic data collected is used to detect, monitor, and plan for changes in the subsurface as the field is developed.
Tetra Tech had been involved in the BC-10 Life of Field Project since 2011 ,starting first with the factory acceptance testing of the OYO Geospace’s GeoRes SubSea seismic array system in Houston. Tetra Tech since worked for Shell on this project supporting all of the infield seismic surveys for the BC-10, starting with the original 2013 baseline survey. At the time of writing, Tetra Tech has worked on five monitor surveys with the January 2020 survey being the most current.
Project history
- 2013: Baseline Survey – completed on November 28th
- 2014: Monitor 1 Survey – completed on July 2nd
- 2015: Monitor 2 – completed on February 28th
- 2016: Monitor 3 – completed April 9th
- 2017: Monitor 4 – as part of the 3D Streamer Survey over Ostra and B West
- 2020: Monitor 5 – completed on February 4th, 2020
To ensure consistency and knowledge retention through these seismic surveys, Tetra Tech used the same specialist since the inception of the work and deployed a seismic processing workstation with processing flows prepared by Tetra Tech.
The seismic recording room and QC processing centre for this project were located onboard the massive floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Espírito Santo. Tetra Tech’s knowledge of these systems and data and the retention of knowledge over time helped deliver consistent success for Shell, year over year.
Tetra Tech’s highly talented seismic acquisition and QC processing team ensure consistency and knowledge retention through these seismic surveys for Shell offshore Brazil.
Connect with us. Reach out to our offshore energy experts in the UK and Europe.
The project featured in this article was undertaken by RPS, A Tetra Tech Company and originally published on RPSgroup.com. In March 2026 RPS rebranded to Tetra Tech.
