Mobil North Sea Ltd contracted CGG London to process the CGG acquired "Quad 9 South" non-exclusive 3D survey through to Prestack depth migration (PreSDM) for use in their on-going exploration and exploitation program for blocks 9/18a and 9/19 of the UKCS.

This was one of the largest 3D PreSDM projects ever, comprising the output of prestack data over an area of 450 sq. km. on a 25m x 12.5m grid to a depth of 8km. The production migration phase of the project ran for 3 months, with on average 60 CPUs of SGI Origin 2000 dedicated to the job. The final PreSDM seismic volume, delivered in March of this year, has been put to immediate use by Mobil in the design and optimization of their Buckland Field development wells.

Early indications are that the PreSDM is having a positive impact on the project with one successful development well having been moved by 80m on the basis of the PreSDM volume. This PreSDM project was performed by the Integrated Geoscience Services department of CGG's London Processing Centre.

In November of last year the quality management system of CGG's London Processing Centre was certified by BVQI to quality standard BS EN ISO 9001. The ISO certification covers "Seismic Data Processing and Integrated Geoscience Services".