Articles
Safety and Due Diligence — A Geophysicist’s Perspective
Randy Walker and Ross Brown
What do you, as a staff geophysicist, need to know and do about safety on the geophysical programs you are undertaking? What are your responsibilities or more importantly, where might you be found liable if something goes wrong during the completion of what often is extensive, costly and inherently hazardous…
Integrated Pre-Stack Depth Migration of VSP and Surface Seismic Data
M. Graziella Kirtland Grech, Don C. Lawton and Scott Cheadle
In the conventional approach to VSP and surface seismic imaging, the VSP and surface seismic data sets are processed and migrated independently. The VSP image is then spliced into the surface seismic result. Although good images can be obtained in this way (e.g. Hinds et al., 1993; Zhu and Lines,…
A Standard Data model for the Energy Industry
Ross Huntley and Trudy Curtis
The PPDM Association is an independent, not-for-profit association that represents over 100 energy companies, vendors, and regulatory agencies worldwide. Formed in 1990 and supported by many dedicated volunteers, the Association delivers vendor-independent standards that serve as the Industry foundation for managing information as an essential asset in the global resource…
Ancient Evenings – Seismic Visualization Using Very Old Techniques
Steve Lynch
A few years ago I was fortunate enough to visit the city of Tunis in North Africa. I was there to teach a training course and when the course was over, as has become my habit, I stayed on for a few days to tour the local sites. One of…
Strategic Infill Drilling Targeted Using Crosswell Seismic – ‘Two Case Studies’
Rena Hatch and Jeff Meyer
Reservoir optimization has been identified by many as the last frontier of the oil and gas industry. As fewer giant fields are discovered, improving the low recoverability from existing oil and gas reservoirs will be the focus of increasing capital spending within the industry. 3-D surface seismic information has been…
Reservoir Monitoring and Characterization for Heavy Oil Thermal Recovery
Sam Sun
Extracted post-stack seismic attributes from time-lapse 3-D seismic data have been used extensively to map steam areal conformance by using statistical analysis in the development and monitoring of follow-up processes at Imperial Oil’s Cold Lake production project. A quantitative cross-calibration scheme between time-lapse seismic surveys has been developed using data…
A Lake-Bottom Cable Seismic Survey: Acquisition and Processing
Robert R. Stewart, Han-Xing Lu, Henry Bland and Lawrence E. Mewhort
The CREWES Project and AOSTRA in collaboration with Husky Energy Inc. conducted a detailed study of Husky’s Pikes Peak heavy oil field near Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. The target of interest in this area is the oil-saturated Waseca sand at a depth of about 500 m. The principal objective of the study…
Seismic Anisotropy: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Vladimir Grechka
Directional dependence of elastic properties of crystals, or their seismic anisotropy, was recognized a long time ago. By the end of the nineteenth century the first laboratory measurements of seismic velocities in sedimentary rocks were made and the main theoretical result in elastic wave propagation ( the Christoffel equation (…
Shear-Wave Anisotropy: A New Window into the Crack-Critical Rockmass
Stuart Crampin
In the last ten years, it has become recognised that crack-induced shear-wave splitting, with azimuthal anisotropy, is an inherent characteristic of almost all rocks in the crust (and upper mantle). This indicates that most in situ rock is pervaded by stress-aligned fluid-saturated cracks. The evolution of such stress-aligned fluid-saturated grain-boundary…
Depth Imaging – “If We Could Turn Back Time”
Larry Lines, Shawn Rushton, Don Lawton and Samuel Gray
Seismic migration is an essential processing step in exploration plays involving any structural complexity, since migration is the process of placing seismic reflection energy in its proper subsurface location. The popular song “If I Could Turn Back Time” can describe the process of achieving accurate migration of seismic data through…
Seismic Imaging: Post-Stack
John C. Bancroft
Seismic imaging is a general term that geophysicists now use to describe processes that convert seismic data into a geological “representation” of the subsurface. These “representations” may vary from simple structural images that use migration algorithms, to ones that estimate rock properties with algorithms that are based on inversion theory.…
Seismic Attributes in Your Facies
Arthur E. Barnes
Imagine having a “seismic search engine”. Built into your seismic data viewer, it would rapidly locate features in your seismic data, like search engines help you locate information on the worldwide web. It could work like this. You are looking at a large 3-D seismic survey for the first time.…
Seismic Attributes
M. Turhan Taner
Since their introduction in the early 1970’s, Complex Seismic Trace Attributes have gained considerable popularity, first as a convenient display form, and later, as they were incorporated with other seismically-derived measurements, they became a valid analytical tool for lithology prediction and reservoir characterization. In recent decades, over 600 papers have…
Multicomponent Seismic Exploration in Canada – One Person’s Perspective
Peter Cary
Let me set something straight from the beginning. This is not going to be one of those review articles where the author gushes with excitement about his subject like some sort of cheerleader. I will try to be more rational than that. This is not because I have nothing good…
Monitoring Production Processes by 4-D Multicomponent Seismic Surveys
Thomas L. Davis
Multicomponent, time lapse seismology has great potential for monitoring production processes in reservoirs. The reason is simply the presence of fractures. Shear waves are much more sensitive than P waves to the presence of fractures or microfractures and the fluid content within the fracture network. Fractures introduce seismic anisotropy into…
Developments, Trends and Future Directions in Vertical Seismic Profiling and Crosswell Seismic Profiling
Bob A. Hardage
Fessenden’s patent of 1917 appears to be the first documented seismic application involving buried sources and geophones. One illustration from this patent is shown in Figure 1. In this diagram, item 49 is a borehole acoustic energy source, and items 15 and 18 are borehole acoustic receivers. Dashed lines 46…
VSP: An In-Depth Seismic Understanding
Robert R. Stewart
Vertical seismic profiling has been a useful measurement to obtain rock properties (velocity, impedance, attenuation, anisotropy) in depth as well as to provide a seismic image of the subsurface. The VSP can also give insight into seismic wave propagation and provide processing and interpretive assistance in the analysis of surface…
VSP for the Interpreter/Processor for 2001 and Beyond: Part 1
Ronald C. Hinds and Richard D. Kuzmiski
The use of the Vertical Seismic Profile (VSP) has expanded during the past 20 years into an economical and viable exploration and exploitation tool. Having started as an extension to the Check Shot survey, an interpreted VSP dataset is seen as a high-resolution subsurface image that is the intimate link…
The CSEG Ratifies a Master License Agreement for Seismic Data
G. Fairs, J. Boyd, P. Einarsson, L. Hunt, B. Korchinski, L. Ramescu, C.Walls, B. Lawrence
The use of seismic data in the exploration and development of oil and gas reserves has never been more important or widespread as it is now. The acquisition of seismic data is expensive and time consuming. It is being conducted with an ever increasing attention and care for its physical…
3D Seismic Surveys – Past, Present and Future
Mike Galbraith
Overviews are often useful and this paper is written for the geophysicist who has not been deeply involved with the design and analysis of 3D seismic survey acquisition for the past 15 years or so, and would like to have an idea of what happened, what’s happening now and what…
