Articles
Embracing Today’s Interpretation Technologies. The tools are here, the time is now.
James Lamb
Now, more than ever, the oil and gas industry is in a race to increase productivity. The impact of decisions made today in adopting new technologies and processes will define success in the next decade. Interpreters in today's oil and gas industry are challenged by many factors. Ways to increase…
Changing Visualization Technology
John Prutzman
Consider this scenario: you are given a 3-D survey known to contain channel sands within a prospective interval. Your job is to quickly identify potentially interesting prospects. To accomplish this quickly, which view would you prefer?
... Choosing the Right Virtual Environment
Theo Mayer
Nearly all producers in the oil/gas industry are now faced with weighing the benefits of an investment in large-scale visualization, a technology that has had profound effects on upstream development and existing field production for the major oil companies. The financial and human resource commitment to a visualization methodology is…
Thinking Inside the Box
Murray Christie
What makes visualization such a powerful enabler of human memory is its ability to enhance visual patterns from the data in 3D space, enable recognition, organization and classification of meaningful geological patterns and allow the direct inference of depositional environments. In the same way in which viewing a meandering channel…
Inside Reality: Extreme Immersion Elevates Virtual Reality to a New Level
Phil Hodgson
Visualization and virtual reality technologies conjured up visions of elitist, other-worldly usage when they first gained notoriety for oil industry purposes in the mid-1990s. However, such applications rather quickly morphed from the perceived esoteric realm to the everyday, becoming almost de rigueur now for any number of E&P uses. Still,…
Human Factors in Visual Collaboration
Dave Ridyard
Large scale visualization systems have moved from the fringes of our industry to become integral to daily workflows at many oil and gas companies. Visualization is not about visualizing our own data. It is about how we share knowledge with each other. It is a key element in interdisciplinary collaboration.…
Dream, Dare, Do
Jeff MacInnis
Audiences love the message that Jeff MacInnis delivers. As the leader of the first team to sail the Northwest Passage, captain of a top 10 Eco-Challenge Team, a World Cup downhill ski racer, best-selling author and entrepreneur, Jeff delivers a “must-see” multimedia presentation. Using National Geographic images and television footage…
Canadian Seismic With a Thump
Dave Monk
The potential for recording seismic data in forestry areas of Canada using novel weight drop systems has been examined. Some methods tested yielded data which is comparable with conventional dynamite data, but at potentially less cost, with the additional benefit of minimizing any environmental impact. The impact energy for a…
Delineation of Steam Flood Using Seismic Attenuation
Ken Hedlin, Larry Mewhort and Gary Margrave
The possible use of attenuation measurements for time-lapse seismic monitoring of an EOR steam flood project in Saskatchewan, Canada is investigated. A VSP survey was used to calculate Q. These values were input to a synthetic seismogram attenuation modeling program that showed there should be an observable increase in attenuation…
2D and 3D Anisotropic Depth Migration Case Histories
Rob Vestrum
Anisotropic depth migration (ADM) has become more commonplace over the past four years. The data-processing examples detailed here illustrate the robustness of the method in a variety of structured settings in the Alberta Foothills. The public-domain structural line, the Husky/Talisman dataset, illustrates subtle improvements in imaging with a dramatic improvement…
Understanding Reservoir Architectures at Christina Lake, Alberta with Crosswell Seismic Imaging
Weimin Zhang, Guoping Li, John Cody and Jeff Meyer
As part of the Christina Lake Phase 1 pilot project, six profiles of crosswell seismic data were acquired by placing both seismic sources and receivers in wellbores. The primary objectives of the survey are to provide a high-resolution reservoir characterization of McMurray formation to identify thin shale laminations (potentially permeability…
Imaging Through Gas Clouds: A Case History from the Gulf Of Mexico
Steve Knapp, Nigel Payne and Tony Johns
Results from the world’s largest 3D four component OBC seismic survey will be presented. Located in the West Cameron area, offshore Gulf of Mexico, the survey operation totaled over 1000 square kilometers and covered more than 46 OCS blocks. The area contains numerous gas invaded zones and shallow gas anomalies…
Memoirs of Successful Geophysicists – Ernie Pallister
Fifty-five years ago the Leduc oilfield set off the oil boom in Alberta. Fifty–four years ago I graduated in physics from the University of Alberta. My timing was wonderful — the first of innumerable fortunate events that were to follow. In this memoir I concentrate on a few learning experiences…
Memoirs of Successful Geophysicists – R.H. Carlyle
After over four years in radar with the Royal Canadian Air Force and obtaining a degree in Engineering, Physics, and post graduate training in semi-conductors at the University of British Columbia, I was hired by Gulf Research and Development Company (G.R.D.C.). My assignment was to report to Seismic Party 30…
Memoirs of Successful Geophysicists – Greg Davidson
I have always enjoyed the technical side of geophysics, the science and the technology. But technology never seems to take me all the way. Any discovery that I have participated in has demanded that I abandon the safety of the ‘firm ground’ of science, and venture out on to the…
Memoirs of Successful Geophysicists – Brian Russell
I must admit that I had mixed feelings when asked to write an article for a compendium entitled “Lives of Successful Geophysicists”. For one thing, I can see all my friends saying: “Who the heck does he think he is!” Secondly, virtually every geophysicist I know is successful, so why…
Memoirs of Successful Geophysicists – Larry Lines
Wendy Lines
Every geophysicist has a story to tell about the many twists and turns in their career development. This is a brief reflection on the paths taken by Larry Lines, Chair in Exploration Geophysics, during his career.... The Role of Visualization in Resource Exploration and Development
Geoffrey A. Dorn
The rapidly expanding application of visualization technology has the potential to fundamentally change the way companies conduct business in the oil and gas industry. Visualization technology has been used for years in exploration and development. Visualization is simply the graphical presentation of data in an intuitive fashion to reveal information.…
Using Advanced Seismic Imaging Tools to See the Invisible Beneath Foothills Structures
Samuel H. Gray, Scott Cheadle, Rob Vestrum, Jon Gittins, Tianfei Zhu, Hans Nanan
Oil and gas exploration in the Foothills of Western Canada is a mammoth industrial endeavor. Members of major Canadian and international oil and gas companies rub shoulders with their counterparts in smaller companies and with individuals and companies who develop exploration prospects, acquire and process geological and geophysical data, drill…
Where’s the Reef
J. Helen Isaac and Larry R. Lines
Pre-stack time and depth migrations of synthetic seismic data demonstrate that time migration does not always position images accurately, even when the exact velocity field is used, whereas prestack depth migration locates images correctly and focuses them better.
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