TDI-Brooks has completed a multi-client multibeam and seabed piston coring program off Suriname.
The company was contracted by GeoPartners, on behalf of Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname, to perform seep data acquisition, processing, interpretation and data management services (multibeam and coring) for the Suriname Seabed Piston Coring Project.
TDI-Brooks provided multibeam acquisition services using the vessel to acquire approximately 45,000 square kilometers of seafloor multibeam data in the survey area as well as 60 SGE cores and seven Heat Flow samples. This project consisted of two phases; geophysical and geochemical, both using TDI’s vessel RV Gyre and crew.
The first phase was the geophysical leg which took place July through October. During this phase TDI-Brooks performed multibeam (MBES), backscatter and plume detection of 45019.7 square kilometers. The second phase took place October through November and consisted of Geochemical multibeam (MBES) backscatter, plume detection, sub-bottom profiler acquisition. A chirp sub-bottom profiler line (1-km) was acquired over each core site.
Several possible hydrocarbon discoveries were made making for a very successful program for all involved, with some visually interesting cores being recovered.
R/V Gyre is outfitted with a full seep hunting kit including a newly installed Kongsberg EM-304 (1×1) hull-mounted multibeam (MBES) kit and Edgetech HM3300 Chirp sub-bottom profiler with a 4×4 Masa TR-1075 transducer array. The vessel has geotechnical and geochemical coring, heat flow, CPT and other sampling capabilities.
Geochemical analyses and interpretation services will be performed at TDI-Brooks chemistry and geotechnical laboratories in College Station, Texas. They will perform geochemical screening analyses of geochemical cores for interstitial carbon gases (C1-C5 hydrocarbons & CO2), total scanning fluorescence (TSF) and C15+Gas chromatography. Cores with seepage hits will further be analyzed for selected stable carbon gas isotopes and aliphatic/aromatic biological markers.