Abstract :
Many of the largest oil fields discovered over the past few years lie under thick layers of salt, deep beneath the seabed. Surveying these geographic formations has presented an intractable problem because of the way that salt distorts acoustic signals. Industry has overcome this problem by distributing the seismic sensors over a wide area and making several passes over the same target area. But this presents a major headache for marine operations, where a powerful seismic vessel is needed to tow the spread of buoyant cables known as streamers in a parallel formation. This has created demand for powerful tow vessels.
