Baker Hughes Incorporated and CGG announced that its Magnitude joint venture has expanded its capabilities to provide dedicated resources and technologies for borehole, surface, and permanent microseismic monitoring. With this expansion, Magnitude offers a full range of microseismic services―including acquisition, processing, and integrated interpretation―that can help operators improve well completion design and maximize recovery at a lower cost per barrel. Specifically, these services can reduce the risks and uncertainties related to fracture stimulation operations, providing operators with the information needed to optimize stimulation designs, avoid geo-hazards, and characterize treatment impact on the formation in real time.

“Magnitude now offers a step-change in the synergies between borehole and surface microseismic monitoring for optimizing hydraulic fracturing,” said Fernando Lopez, Chief Executive Officer and President of Magnitude. “With the combination of expertise from both Baker Hughes and CGG in seismic acquisition, reservoir characterization, and pressure pumping technologies, Magnitude offers a complete microseismic solution for any situation.”

A key component of Magnitude’s new services is a team of seasoned experts whose disciplines range from engineering, geophysics and microseismic, to wireline and rock mechanics. By offering all monitoring applications, Magnitude experts can recommend optimum acquisition designs for any well configuration, with no bias toward any specific approach. During the fracture stimulation, microseismic data is acquired using one or more of the array configurations and processed in real time to provide almost instantaneous feedback of basic fracture network geometry, containment, event magnitudes, and other properties. This realtime feedback enables operators to adjust treatment designs on-the-fly, if desired, or to evaluate treatment effectiveness when coupled with fracture modeling. Post-processing analysis is then provided to optimize future well spacing, stage spacing, number of perforation clusters and general fracture modeling for future wells.

Microseismic monitoring is used in various settings with sensors deployed in boreholes, at the surface, or near-surface. Borehole monitoring utilizes a multilevel array of geophones, placed in a nearby observation well, at a depth close to the targeted zone. Surface monitoring uses arrays of several thousands of geophones placed at ground level in a configuration specially engineered to cancel noise and maximize seismic waveform detection. Finally, near surface monitoring relies on shallow buried arrays of a few multilevel sensors installed at 200 to 300 ft depth. Permanent installations can be used for large field frac monitoring, refrac monitoring or monitoring of induced microearthquakes around treatment or waste disposal wells.

About Baker Hughes

Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI) is a leading supplier of oilfield services, products, technology and systems to the worldwide oil and natural gas industry. The company's 59,000-plus employees today work in more than 80 countries helping customers find, evaluate, drill, produce, transport and process hydrocarbon resources.

About CGG

CGG (NYSE/Euronext: CGG) is a fully integrated Geoscience company providing leading geological, geophysical and reservoir capabilities to its broad base of customers primarily from the global oil and gas industry. Through its three complementary business divisions of Equipment, Acquisition and Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir (GGR), CGG brings value across all aspects of natural resource exploration and exploitation.

CGG employs over 9,800 people around the world, all with a Passion for Geoscience and working together to deliver the best solutions to its customers.

CGG is listed on the Euronext Paris SA (ISIN: 0000120164) and the New York Stock Exchange (in the form of American Depositary Shares. NYSE: CGG).