During his presentation, “Revealing Angola’s Subsurface Potential with State-of-the-Art Technology,” he noted that the company is combining AI, full-waveform inversion (FWI) and ocean-bottom nodes (OBN) to improve subsurface imaging. The approach aims to reduce exploration costs while giving investors faster access to strategic data for de-risking.

“Our ability to image the data has improved radically,” he said, highlighting FWI as a key driver of recent improvements in subsurface understanding. He said SLB’s work represents a shift toward extracting greater value from existing seismic datasets rather than relying solely on new acquisition.

SLB holds a substantial Angolan seismic library comprising about 220,000-line km of 2D data and 65,000 km2 of 3D seismic, largely concentrated in the Kwanza Basin. Cooke said the company is using AI to add 3D volumes to its 2D portfolio while reimaging existing 3D data through FWI.

“There’s still a huge amount of value in the Kwanza Basin,” Cooke said, pointing to significant unresolved information within existing datasets. “Multiparameter elastic FWI-derived relativity delivers much more detailed and high-resolution imaging.”

Cooke also outlined plans to determine where OBN technology could provide additional value, saying SLB has already completed a survey design for FWI in Angola. OBN offers multicomponent broadband measurements, low frequencies and high-fold data while enabling converted-wave imaging and acquisition around obstructions.

SLB is positioning OBN as an integrated multiclient solution designed to complement legacy datasets through economics of scale. Cooke said Angola provides an important testing ground for the technology before SLB takes an integrated approach into other markets facing unresolved subsurface imaging challenges.