IPA16-507-G
PROOCEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROELUM ASSOCIATION
Fortieth Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2016
CENTRAL KALIMANTAN WEIGHT DROP SEISMIC ACQUISITION AND IMPLICATION TO
PETROLEUM EXPLORATION
Riki Tasrianto*
ABSTRACT
Weight drop seismic acquisition has been shown to
be an efficient and cost effective method of acquiring
seismic data in frontier onshore areas where
conventional seismic data (using dynamite) is
difficult, expensive or takes a long time to acquire.
In the Central Kalimantan Palangkaraya PSC,
ConocoPhillips Indonesia acquired 126 kilometers of
weight drop 2D seismic reflection data as part of
their exploration program. In this area, the weight
drop seismic is operationally superior to
conventional to 2D since it was quick to acquire,
relatively inexpensive and did not require permitting,
extensive logistics or socialization studies. The
results from this seismic data made it possible to de-
risk the presence of the very thin Tertiary cover and
map key stratigraphic events including the Pre-
Tertiary basement.
The weight drop survey design consisted of a single
land geophone array of about 4 km. For each shot
point station, 4-8 shots were taken (multiple thumps
per shot point) and then summed together to enhance
coherent signal and reduce random noise. An
industry standard seismic processing workflow
including Kirchhoff Pre Stack Time Migration was
applied to process the data. The resulting seismic
data produced excellent image quality to about 1
second TWT, proving to be better in many ways than
the offset vintage seismic data in the same interval.
Using this data, the acoustic basement is interpreted
to be located at about 0.6 to 1 second TWT over
Palangkaraya PSC. In addition, the seismic data
made it possible to interpret Miocene Warukin,
Oligocene Berai and Eocene Tanjung equivalent
Formations across the block. The data also indicate
the presence of buried hills interpreted to be Late
Cretaceous granitic plutons and confirm recent
structural movement on the block.
The weight drop seismic proved to be an effective
tool to quickly and efficiently map key areas of the
Palangkaraya Block. This data has been instrumental
* ConocoPhillips Kalimantan Exploration Ltd. 
for the depth and lithology prognosis in the Nangka-
1 exploration well as well as casing point locations.
In addition, this seismic data has made it possible to
successfully distinguish different lithostratigraphic
units in the area.
INTRODUCTION
Onshore seismic acquisition in Indonesia, especially
in a frontier area is a challenge. Since the typical
system uses dynamite as the wave source, careful
planning is required to secure land usage permits,
determine how to properly handle explosives, and
ensure proper socialization studies and land scouting
is performed. These pre-acquisition activities may
require one year prior to seismic crew mobilization.
Typically, the local province/ regency regulation and
local society desires play a large role in the timing of
the pre-acquisition activities.
For a forestry area, the land usage permit is granted
by Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In order to
have the permit, a company (in this case oil and gas
company) needs to secure three letters of
recommendation which need to be processed in
sequence. These recommendations consist of:
recommendation from regency/major,
recommendation from governor and
recommendation from Local Environmental Agency.
In addition, the permitting process also requires a
UKLUPL (Upaya Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup
dan Upaya Pemantauan Lingkungan Hidup) study
which together with the governor’s recommendation
is the main consideration for the Ministry of
Environment and Forestry Indonesia to award the
Land usage permit.
For the explosive handling, a company should look
for suitable land for storing the explosives safely
following the 2008 BPMIGAS PUPOS (Pedoman
Umum Pelaksanaan Operasi Seismik,). Once the
main explosive storage is built, the company may
process the explosive ownership and usage permit
(P1, P2 and P3) which may require 3-6 months to
process. Lastly, a company also needs to ship the
explosives from the explosive factory to the main
explosive storage safely and it must be guarded by
the police.
During acquisition, the use of explosives generates
significant vibration to the area surrounding the shot
locations. Proper land scouting and socialization
studies are critical, especially if the planned seismic
line crosses local housing or public facilities. A
company needs to consider a safe distance between
the shot hole and the public facilities. Sometimes a
seismic line may need to be crooked or offset from
the original location if it could not satisfy the safe
distance requirement.
Considering the risks and potential social damage of
acquiring seismic using explosives, ConocoPhillips
Indonesia decided to pursue a non-explosive seismic
acquisition method in onshore Central Kalimantan
(Palangkaraya PSC). The acquisition utilized an
accelerated weight drop as the wave source, which in
this paper has shown to be an efficient and effective
tool for acquiring fit-for-purpose subsurface imaging
of shallow Pre-Tertiary basement in onshore Central
Kalimantan. Since the acquisition did not use
explosives, the pre-survey preparation did not
require:
 Explosive ownership and usage permit
 Land acquisition for explosive storage
 Damage cost payment/compensation as the
environmental impact is negligible
For the onshore Central Kalimantan, the survey was
acquired along existing roads so only minimal
permitting was required. The pre-survey preparation
took only about two (2) months, mainly related to
equipment mobilization to the country. In total, 126
kilometers of weight drop 2D seismic data was
acquired (Figure 1) from December 2013 to February
2014. The weight drop seismic acquisition was part
of exploration program over Central Kalimantan
Indonesia which was instrumental in helping to de-
risk the amount of Tertiary cover in this frontier play
area. The only disadvantage of the weight drop
system is that it needs an open access area so that the
instrument can properly mobilize which limits its
areal extent. For the Central Kalimantan survey, the
acquisition was limited to the asphalt and gravel
roads.
Weight Drop Seismic Acquisition System
The weight drop seismic system is a non-explosive
source seismic acquisition system which employs an
accelerated weight which is dropped to the ground to
produce the sound wave. The weight is dropped so
that the response is close to an impulse response. In
terms of the recording system, the weight drop
system is very similar to a conventional explosive
system. It uses a conventional geophone array and
every shot is monitored in real time. Operationally,
the weight drop source is towed by a car or small
truck. It requires an open road so the source vehicle
can have unrestricted access between the shot point
locations. This limits the operation to roads which
are either asphalt or gravel. Originally, weight drop
seismic was used for civil engineering and geo-
technical purposes. The system has been proven to
be reliable for acquiring seismic data for subway
planning in a metropolitan city such as in Singapore
(source: GSL Singapore). The results from this study
illustrate that weight drop seismic can now be
implemented in petroleum exploration.
Energy Source
The accelerated weight drop used in this study was
the Gisco Geo ESS500. It is an electrically operated
portable seismic energy source. It has a fully
integrated control and triggering system. The
operation requires a 12-volt battery and a trigger
cable or radio trigger link to the recording
seismograph. The Gisco Geo ESS500 weight is about
250 kg with the magnitude of the force is 1000
Newton. It is supplied as a fully integrated system
with built in controller and trigger system. Once the
“FIRE” button is pushed, a complete cycle of weight
thumping to standby occurs automatically. The
electronic control box has an attached battery cable
and accelerometer trigger sensors which are mounted
on the source (Figure 2).
Recording System & Geophone
The recording system utilizes iZSeis Sigma
geophone (Figure 3a). It employs twelve (12)
geophones for each group station and has a total
array length of 2800 meters. For each shot point
station, various numbers of thumps (4-8 thumps) are
delivered depending on the quality of the signal
recorded for each thump. The maximum fold
recorded was 56 with a SP interval of 25 m, group
interval of 12.5 m and 224 channels of recording.
Table 1 summarizes the acquisition system
parameters.
Survey Operation & Data Quality observation
For the Central Kalimantan weight drop seismic
acquisition, the line layout is designed following the
available asphalt and gravel roads. No “Rintis” and
bridging work were performed for this project since
the lines followed open areas. The operation started
with a topography survey, continued with geophone
and cable spreading and then completed with data
recording (Figure 3).
Since the survey lines were spread along active
roads, the level of the ambient noise, particularly the
vehicular noise, was very high. For most shot
stations, the number of thumps per station was
increased to eight (8) in order to gather a stronger and
more coherent signal. The recorded thumps for each
station were then stacked together to eliminate the
incoherent vehicular noise. If the traffic was very
busy, the recording was postponed to wait for the
road to be clear.
The typical shot gather display of the Central
Kalimantan Weight Drop Seismic is shown in Figure
4. This is an example of shot gather in which the level
of the vehicular noise was acceptable. The vehicular
noise is recorded within trace number 1109 to 1127
within this shot gather. This noise was primarily
removed during the diversity shot summation (see
paragraph on seismic processing for details). A
strong surface wave, in this case ground roll, was
commonly observed within the data particularly
within the narrow offsets. This noise was eliminated
through inner muting. The reflection event (signal) is
shown by hyperbolic events on shot gather domain
which occur mainly within the first 700 ms two way
time (TWT).
Seismic Processing
An industry standard seismic processing workflow
including Kirchhoff PSTM (Pre Stack Time
Migration) was used to process the data. Three (3)
iteration of velocity analysis was applied and the
final velocity analysis spacing was about 500 meters.
The seismic processing workflow involved AGC
(Automatic Gain Correction) before and after PSTM
due to considerably low signal level deeper than 400
ms TWT. Two post stack processing algorithms were
used to enhance the reflector continuity after final
stacking. These algorithms included the coherency
filter and band pass filter. Unfortunately, these
algorithms make it difficult to use the seismic data
for Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) analysis or any
other seismic amplitude analysis later.
The best process to enhance the signal for the weight
drop seismic was the diversity shot summation
process. This process minimizes the influence of
high amplitude traces (i.e., vehicular noise) on the
stacking of the data. The diversity summation
involves scaling the input traces to the summation by
the reciprocal of the RMS power of the trace. RMS
power is the square of RMS amplitude, which in this
process makes the highest amplitude traces become
the lowest amplitude traces after summation. For
example, consider a group of traces with the same
channel number and shot location, i = 1 to n. Each
trace will have RMS amplitude, Ai, and will be
scaled by the reciprocal of the RMS power, Si =
1/(Ai²). These scaled traces are then summed using
unity scaling. Finally, the summed trace is scaled by
the sum of the reciprocals of all of the traces RMS
powers, ΣSi for i = 1 to n, such that the reciprocal
RMS power of the summed trace is the same as the
mean reciprocal RMS power of the input traces.
Although it is possible to apply a diversity
summation using time-windows, it was not done in
this case. Instead, the whole-trace RMS power was
used. This is because the high amplitude noise in this
dataset is contained in the entire trace rather than in
specific time brackets within the traces. This is
typical of datasets that are heavily influenced by
vehicular noise and stationary machine noise (Figure
5).
Implication to Petroleum Exploration
The weight drop seismic program was planned as a
non-contiguous survey which would help to
constrain regional dip across the block and image the
Pre-Tertiary basement reflection event seen from
offset vintage seismic data (Kleibacker et al., 2015).
The key observations from this seismic acquisition
technique which improved the petroleum exploration
understanding in the area are (Figure 6):
1. The thickness of tertiary sediment ranges from
600 to 1000 meters. Previous work suggested
that the central Kalimantan has a very thin
Tertiary cover and the Pre-Tertiary basement
ramps up to the western basin edge of the
Cretaceous Schwaner plutonic and volcanic
province (Kleibacker et al., 2015).
2. Evidence of the dip reversal in the area supports
the West Barito High concept as a regional
migration focal point.
3. Evidence of drape anticlines, buried hills and
stratigraphic on-lap could support local closures
as targets for exploration.
Although the lines only covered 126 km of the 7,612
Km2 area, the weight drop was a key tool to progress
the exploration program in the Palangkaraya PSC.In
addition, this seismic data made it possible to plan
the Nangka-1 well, a well test supporting the
Palangkaraya PSC exploration program.
Seismic Correlation and Well Planning.
The quality of the image acquired using weight drop
seismic made it possible to differentiate seismic
packages based on their character. These packages
could then be related to the sedimentary packages in
the region by direct comparison of the seismic image.
It was also possible to observe the Pre-Tertiary
paleo-topography and tertiary sedimentary thickness
across the area using this seismic data. Figure-7
shows a relative comparison of weight drop seismic
with the conventional vintage seismic in Central
Kalimantan region. The weight drop seismic shows
higher vertical resolution compared to the
conventional seismic and the seismic bandwidth
within the tertiary section in the weight drop seismic
is about 5 Hz – 120 Hz compared to 5 Hz to 70 Hz
with conventional seismic. In addition, the seismic
character definition of the high reflectivity packages
and flooding events are clearer and more consistent
in the weight drop seismic than they are in the
conventional seismic.
The advantage that the older vintage conventional
seismic has over the weight drop seismic is that it can
be tied to existing well data. This makes it possible
to correlate the seismic packages to the sedimentary
sections (Figure 7). From the Perigi-1 well data, the
Dahor and Warukin Formations are dominated by an
intercalation of sand, shale and coal. On the
conventional and weight drop seismic, the coal layers
can be identified as a continuous high negative
amplitude reflection bounded by less reflective
positive and negative amplitude reflection, indicative
of shale and sand. The Upper Berai Formation is a
distinct high reflection packages both on the
conventional and weight drop seismic. The Lower
Berai is a non-reflective interval which indicates that
it is relatively homogenous. Based on the well data,
this interval is interpreted to be limestone. Finally, a
high reflectivity package similar to the basement
response on-laps the basement highs both in the
conventional seismic and the weight drop seismic.
This interval indicates the presence of the Tanjung
Formation.
Weight Drop Seismic for Well Planning Post Drill
analysis
The seismic character match between the weight
drop and conventional seismic was very important to
help predict the stratigraphy in the Palangkaraya
Block. This character match made it possible to
predict the stratigraphy for well planning purposes of
the Nangka-1 well. For the depth prognosis of
formation tops and casing points, the weight drop
seismic imaging velocity was calibrated to the Barito
Basin regional velocity trend. The actual stratigraphy
and tops that were drilled in the Nangka-1 well
matched very closely to the pre-drill estimate using
the weight drop seismic and the depth conversion
methods (Figure 7). This allowed accurate well
prognosis and casing point planning for Nangka-1
well (Figure 8).
CONCLUSION
This paper demonstrates that weight drop seismic
was an effective tool to image the subsurface in
Central Kalimantan. The weight drop seismic is not
only capable for civil engineering projects but it is
also sufficient for exploration activity within a
relative thin sedimentary layer (~1 km). Weight drop
seismic is simpler and requires less time to plan than
using explosives as the source. The seismic pre-
survey activity is much simpler than the explosive
seismic survey which requires special consideration
for Land use.
The two main considerations for using the weight
drop system is the availability of the access for the
weight drop to be mobilized and also potential weak
signal in non-competent surface formations.
Finally, the use of weight drop seismic in Central
Kalimantan has made it possible to de-risk the
presence of a thin Tertiary cover and to confirm that
the West Barito high was a focal point for
hydrocarbon migration.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author would like to thanks to all Central
Kalimantan Exploration team and ConocoPhillips
Indonesia management who is supporting for this
paper to be published. Special acknowledgement is
given to Geophysical Services Singapore (GSL) who
conducted the data acquisition and Dolphin
Geophysical who carried the seismic processing.
REFERENCE
GSL Internal Report, Seismic Acquisition Project.
Kleibacker, D., Tasrianto, R., Saripudin, A., 2015,
Long Distance Migration in Central Kalimantan:
Asolution to The Barito Dilemma?, Proceedings of
the Indonesia Petroleum Association 39th Annual
Convention
 TABLE 1

SEISMIC ACQUISITION PARAMETER

Recording System iZSeis Sigma

Recording length 2 second
Sampling rate 0.25 ms
LowZcut filter 3 Hz at 6dB/oct
HiZcut filter 206 Hz at 276 dB/Oct
Data recording media Hard Disk / iZseis
Source type ESS500 Accelerated Weight Drop
Thumps per Shot Various (4-8)
Array length 2800 meters
Array Type Geophones
No of groups 224
Shot interval 25 m
Group interval 12.5 m

 
Figure 1 - Basemap of Palangkaraya PSC illustrating the location of the newly acquired weight drop seismic
(red lines), the existing conventional seismic (blue lines) and the Nangka-1 well.

Figure 2 - The Gisco ESS-500 accelerate weight drop seismic unit used for the Central Kalimantan seismic
survey. The figure shows the 250kg weight (source) thumping the ground generating the seismic
wave.

 
Figure 3 - Summary of the weight drop seismic acquisition operation. a) iZseis recording system (foreground)
is laying in position to record along the side of the road. b) Accelerate weight drop machine being
towed by a car during operation. c) Acquisition crew at benchmark location. d) Local police
guarding the operation. e) Real-time recording and QC unit.

 
Figure 4 - Typical shot gather display for Central Kalimantan weight drop seismic. Clear reflectors are
observed down to 700 mili-second TWT.

Figure 5 - Trace scaling pre diversity summation a) before scaling b) after scaling

 
Figure 6 - Regional seismic cross section in the time domain illustrating the weight drop seismic (Kal-8, Kal-3, Kal-6) and the conventional seismic (7B line). The
seismic cross section shows the estimated thickness of the Tertiary sediment within Palangkaraya PSC to be 600 to 1000 meter, using average velocity
of 2000 m/s. The seismic cross section also shows the central portion of the Palangkaraya PSC, named the West Barito high, is the potential focal point
of regional hydrocarbon migration from the Barito basin.

 
Figure 7 - Comparison of conventional seismic (1970’s) to the weight drop seismic (2014). The weight drop shows higher temporal resolution and better seismic
character definition than the conventional seismic. Careful correlation between the conventional and weight drop seismic data seismic data provides
confidence for predicting the stratigraphic uits observed in the weight drop seismic.

 
 Time‐Depth Plot 
TWT (ms)
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0

500

1000
TVDss (ft)

1500

2000

Seismic
Velocity
VSP
2500

AST

3000

Figure 8 - Time-depth and velocity-depth plot of Nangka-1 VSP and Sonic (AST) against the seismic velocity
from weight drop seismic. The plot shows the seismic velocity trend from the weight drop seismic
closely matches the Nangka-1 VSP velocity. This made it possible to use the seismic velocity to
accurately predict key depths during well planning.