Articles
Interbed Multiple Prediction on Land: Which Technology, and Which Domain?
Jian Sun and Kristopher A. Innanen
Prediction and removal of internal or interbed multiples is an increasingly high priority problem in seismic data analysis. One reason for the growth of its role and importance comes from the increased sensitivity with which primary amplitudes in quantitative interpretation are now analyzed. But the importance of accurate and robust…
Reflections from Contrasts in Isotropic Attenuative Media AVO and Beyond
Shahpoor Moradi and Kristopher A. Innanen
The purpose of this article is to summarize and illustrate some features of new theory describing the interaction of seismic waves with viscoelastic structures and interfaces. Progress in these areas makes available more sophisticated tools for AVO analysis and inversion, and thereby quantitative interpretation, and for multi parameter full waveform…
A Summary of Several Challenges Facing Multi-Parameter Elastic Full Waveform Inversion
Wenyong Pan and Kristopher A. Innanen
In spite of all that there is still to learn about seismic full waveform inversion (FWI), and there is a lot, the technology has accumulated some significant success stories in recent years – enough to motivate researchers to think quite ambitiously about how far we might go with it. Moreover,…
Mental Casualties of a Down-turned Market
Amanda Knowles
Aaron sighed, “I lost my job in December and I can’t find anything else.” His statement hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity. I struggled to find the right words to say. How could I help? What could I possibly do? My company wasn’t hiring and I…
Support Services Available for Those Facing Mental Health Challenges
Rob Holt
In any given year, at least one in five people in Canada experience a mental health problem or illness, and most of us know someone who has faced a mental health challenge or concern. Mental illness does not discriminate based on age, gender, religion or race. Mental illness can be…
Introduction to September Focus: Innovation in Land Seismic
Allan R Châtenay and Paul Thacker
Throughout the history of reflection seismic data acquisition there has been a continuous increase in the acquired field trace density as new acquisition and processing technologies have emerged. As a consequence, the E&P industry has seen consistent improvements in final seismic data quality. In this month’s RECORDER Focus section, we…
Deriving High Quality Horizontal Positioning of Seismic Receivers Directly from GPS Receivers Embedded in Wireless Seismic Receiver Nodes
Allan R Châtenay and Paul Thacker
Our work demonstrates that positional data derived from the GPS receivers embedded in wireless seismic receiver nodes can achieve horizontal positioning quality which complies with the minimum standard required for most land-based seismic data acquisition operations. While the original purpose of the GPS receivers within seismic receiver nodes was to…
Technology Collaboration is the Key Element in Frontier Seismic Exploration
Jason Criss
Seismic exploration has long been done in remote, out of the way regions of the globe. However, a definition for frontier area is not a region which is necessarily remote but one that has had limited exploration. This can mean anything from distant jungles to Arctic forests, but a common…
Field Testing Justifying Significant Changes in 3D Design Parameters to Improve Seismic Data and Decrease Costs
Ann O’Byrne, Greg MacNeil and Andrew Kura
Challenging the status quo to optimize 3D acquisition has been a focus of the Foster Creek team since late 2014 when Cenovus initiated a pilot project to decrease the cost of acquiring 3D seismic data. The challenge was to decrease acquisition costs while maintaining data quality and safety standards.
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It’s Time to Wake Up!
Doug Pruden
I want to proclaim to the Canadian oil industry that the pity party is now officially over and it is time to get up and get back to work.
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How Geophysics Can Generate and Demonstrate More Value During the Development of Mature Unconventional Resource Plays: A Personal Opinion
Rob Holt
The discovery in the early 1990s by George Mitchell and his team at Mitchell Energy of how to profitably exploit the Barnett Shale play fuelled the North American unconventionals revolution, aided by (1) oil and gas price increases; (2) improvements in drilling and completions technologies; (3) readily available capital and…
Improving Seismic Data While Decreasing Costs
Ann O’Byrne
In the latter half of 2013 Cenovus initiated a pilot to decrease the cost of acquiring 3D seismic data while maintaining data quality and safety standards. Monitor 4D’s frequently made use of Vibroseis as an infill. Earlier testing indicated that Vibroseis acquisition could replace future baseline surveys; however investigation and…
Introduction to June Focus: DAS/Borehole Geophysics
Paul Webster
Welcome to this special edition of the RECORDER with a focus on Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and borehole geophysics. There are four papers on DAS, in particular with application to Vertical Seismic Profiles (VSPs) and one on DAS for microseismic. Since DAS was first used as a downhole optic sensing…
The use of fiber-optic sensing to efficiently acquire vertical seismic profiles
Tim Dean, Theo Cuny, and Arthur Hartog
Conventional vertical seismic profiles (VSPs) are recorded by lowering receivers, usually geophones but increasingly accelerometers, contained within shuttles down a well where they are anchored to the borehole wall using clamps or bowsprings. A seismic source (often located adjacent to the well-head, i.e. at zero-offset) is then activated and data…
Comparing DAS and Geophone Zero-Offset VSP Data Sets Side-By-Side
Mark E. Willis, Cemal Erdemir, Andreas Ellmauthaler, Oscar Barrios, David Barfoot
Zero-offset vertical seismic profile (VSP) data were acquired by both retrievable (wireline) geophones and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) on cemented-in fiber-optic cable. Side-by-side comparisons of these data sets are shown at several steps in the processing flow to help understand the advantages of each of these data types. Good data…
Simultaneous Acquisition of Distributed Acoustic Sensing VSP with Multi-mode and Single-mode Fiber-optic Cables and 3C-Geophones at the Aquistore CO2 Storage Site
D. E. Miller, T.M. Daley, D. White, B.M. Freifeld, M. Robertson, J. Cocker, M. Craven
A dynamite 3D VSP survey, a Vibrator 2D VSP survey and related calibration surveys at the Aquistore CO2 storage site in Saskatchewan served as a technology test for distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). DAS data was acquired as a vertical seismic profile (VSP) on two codeployed fibers, one single-mode (SM) and one…
Field trials of distributed acoustic sensing for reservoir delineation with VSP
Ge Zhan, Qingsong Li, Jay Nahm, Jan Kommedal and Jon Konkler
A most recent fiber-optic based technology that has been adopted in VSP acquisition is distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), where the fiber-optic cable in the well is the sensor and a typical seismic source is shooting on the surface into the reservoir formation. This technology enables a fiber-optic cable to be…
DAS Microseismic
Paul Webster, Mathieu Molenaar and Colin Perkins
Fiber-Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) applied to microseismic has the potential to significantly change the cost structure and quality of microseismic data acquisition. When a fiber-optic cable is deployed down-hole, it can be used for many purposes: hydraulic fracture monitoring, flow monitoring, VSPs and microseismic. Economies of scale are achieved…
Introduction to May Focus Discovery and Exploration: Asteroids
Alan R. Hildebrand
he last two decades have seen extraordinary advances in diverse research directions such as the Standard Model of particle physics or unravelling the DNA sequences of viruses to primates. However, possibly under-appreciated is that our Solar System is being mapped for the first time in an unprecedented age of discovery…
The Last Alert: A New Battle Front in Asteroid Defense
Aren Heinze
While some discoveries in astronomy rely on light that has crossed the observable universe to reach us, another epochal endeavor is unfolding much closer to our home planet: the cataloging of Solar System objects that could actually hit the Earth.
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