TGS Wins Mediterranean Contract, Upgrades Data Link Performance

Source: Speedcast

TGS has been awarded a streamer acquisition contract in the Mediterranean. A Ramform Titan-class vessel is scheduled to mobilize in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the survey expected to have a duration of approximately 110 days.

Kristian Johansen, CEO of TGS, commented: "We are very pleased to secure this contract award, which extends our streamer acquisition backlog well into the first quarter of 2027. The award reflects continued demand for high-quality seismic data in support of offshore exploration activity. By combining the industry-leading capacity of our Ramform Titan-class vessels with our proprietary GeoStreamer technology, we are well positioned to deliver superior data quality and help our client unlock new resource potential in the Mediterranean."

NEW DATA SOLUTION

Speedcast’s all-LEO solution is being deployed across TGS’ global fleet of high-capacity, multi-sensory streamer vessels and Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) operations designed to capture data from seismic surveys. The connectivity solution centers on Starlink’s new Dedicated Service, designed to deliver superior performance for high-bandwidth use cases, including the highest tier of prioritization and even lower latency, jitter and packet loss. Eutelsat OneWeb and other LEO resilience WANs are all orchestrated by Speedcast’s SIGMA intelligent edge compute platform Elite version.

The new Speedcast solution enables the near real-time transmission and remote cloud processing of a full integrity seismic data set of up to 10 terabytes a day at sustained upload speeds of 1Gbit/s, replacing the traditional method of transporting physical media from the vessel.
This reduces the need for significant amounts of High-Performance Computing (HPC) onboard, along with the corresponding support model. 

Additionally, highly qualified, experienced processing geophysicists can now perform the processing onshore instead of working shift patterns on an offshore rotation of several weeks. Access to new onshore cloud processing through this new all-LEO system dramatically speeds up the availability of data for TGS clients.

During live testing of eight Starlink Performance kits on the Dedicated Service, Speedcast achieved peak upload speeds of 950 Mbps. Starlink Dedicated Service resulted in three to four times performance increase versus normal bonded Starlink Global Priority.

"Digitalization at TGS is measured at the vessel, not in the strategy deck. The constraint has never been the data we can record; it's the data we can move,” said Jérôme Cousin, Vice President Enterprise IT at TGS. “Speedcast's all-LEO solution and our cloud-first operating model work together: the combination of high-performance connectivity and our cloud operating model allows us to securely manage and process ever-larger seismic datasets at unprecedented speed, reducing reliance on physical media and enabling near real-time data delivery. By creating a global communications platform across our fleet, we can simplify operations, centralize specialist expertise, and accelerate the delivery of high-quality insights to our clients wherever they operate. That's how we deliver critical intelligence to energy customers worldwide, faster."