OREANDA-NEWS. November 26, 2010. Azimut Energy Services (AES), a Kazakhstan subsidiary of Integra Group (LSE:INTE) has completed a major 3D seismic survey between July and October for TOO Korned, owned 100% by OMV Petrom SA. The survey of approximately 18,000 shot points covered 225 sq km of which roughly 75% lie in the transition zone of the Caspian Sea. Deep mud and wind-driven flooding from the sea significantly restrict the use of standard equipment, but the project was completed ahead of plan after 3 months of continuous operations.

“Integra demonstrated its capability in the complicated transition zone environment for land seismic acquisition” said Christopher Einchcomb, Executive Vice-President for Geophysics of Integra Group. “Successful completion of this project opens up new opportunities for us in the transition zones of Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and globally, in areas relatively underexplored due to challenges associated with their accessibility and environmental sensitivity”.

Earlier, Integra successfully completed two other seismic projects in Kazakhstan, including the largest for over a decade. The first survey performed over Kazakhstan’s largest gas condensate field utilized “slip-sweep” vibroseis technology to complete over 270,000 shot points, covering nearly 900 sq km in 6 months.  State-of-the-art equipment enabled average production rates to exceed 1,700 shot points per day, and a maximum of nearly 2,890 shot points per day.

A second major survey over one of Kazakhstan’s largest oilfields used innovative technology to per-form continuous field operations over 300 days, resulting in the acquisition of nearly 70,000 shot points covering 1,100 sq km of 3D data. State-of-the art recording equipment allowed up to 6,300 ac-tive channels within the complex field infrastructure.

Together, the three surveys delivered over 360,000 shot points and used resources from the entire Integra Group seismic division: AES, Integra Geophysics and the new JV formed with WesternGeco (Schlumberger).

Technical achievements in these projects in Kazakhstan were complemented by exceptional HSE performance.  In completing these surveys Integra achieved over 2.5 million incident free man-hours and over 4 million vehicle accident-free kilometers.