Geotrace, BP to develop POCS seismic technology

Geotrace, an independent Reservoir services company that provides subsurface imaging solutions to the oil and gas industry, is teaming with BP to further develop POCS (Projection Onto a Convex Set) technology for use in seismic data processing for the oil and gas industry. BP originally developed POCS technology, which is a powerful tool for interpolating—or reconstructing—data.

POCS technology uses information surrounding data that may be missing, such as in a particular Reservoir formation, in order to reconstruct the missing data. The technology targets those companies specializing in oil and gas production and exploration risk management.

“By providing missing information, POCS’ primary advantage is that it helps minimize risk in assessing a reservoir,” says Bill Schrom, CEO of Geotrace. “The technology opens doors that were previously closed by allowing geoscientists to build missing data from the information they already have.

“Ideally, geoscientists acquire all the data they need to help them understand Reservoir formations. However, in some cases, certain valuable information may be missed in initial data acquisition. This is where POCS plays a valuable role in reconstructing missing data and eliminating the cost of acquiring new data to fill in the gaps,” Schrom explains.

POCS technology is commonly used in many fields where data are corrupted or missing, such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).