MMA conducted an 875km pipeline route survey, the longest of its kind in Australia, on the Ichthys Gas Field Development in 2008. The Ichthys field, which is located offshore Western Australia in the Browse Basin, approximately 440km north of Broome is operated by the Inpex Corporation.
Over a period of 128 days, the MMA team surveyed a total area of 850km² that represented:
- 6000km line kilometers surveyed
- 1.1 billion soundings aquired
- 356 million soundings gridded
- 400,000 soundings chartered
- The collection of more than 2TB of raw data
The full scope of work completed by MMA included:
- 875km geophysical pipeline route survey
- Data acquisition - multibeam echo sounder, dual frequency sidescan sonar / chirp sub-bottom profiler combined system and boomer sub-bottom profiler
- Offshore data processing
- Geotechnical sampling including drop/piston coring and CPT's
- Field surveys encompassing four additional blocks within the Ichthys Field
- Additional geophysical survey of the 'Shelf Break' to assist with the site selection for the future