Articles
Big Questions About Our Solar System’s Small Bodies: Asteroids and Comets
A. Mainzer, J. Bauer, R. Cutri, T. Grav, E. Kramer, J. Masiero, C. Nugent, S. Sonnett, E. Wright
In addition to its eight planets circling the Sun, our solar system teems with smaller bodies, asteroids and their more ice-rich cousins, the comets. The dominance of these so-called minor planets in terms of their sheer numbers provokes several seemingly simple questions about them: How many are there, did they…
The Catalina Sky Survey: Exploration leads to discovery, but not always for the discovery that was expected
Steve Larson
The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) is a NASA-funded survey to help quantify the potential hazard of impacts by Near Earth Objects (NEOs). However, the survey images contain many other scientifically useful data.
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Influence of Acquisition Geometry on Event Cloud Asymmetry and on b-Value Analysis
Melanie Grob and Mirko van der Baan
The most common setup to monitor microseismic events during hydraulic fracturing experiments includes a single observation well. This type of setup can lead to biases in event detection, location and magnitude computation. We statistically analyse simulated catalogues of events that represent common hydraulic fracturing experiments and especially focus on the…
The Quest Carbon Capture Project
Simon O’Brien
In September 2012, Shell, on behalf of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project venture (Shell Canada Energy, Chevron Canada Limited, Marathon Oil Canada Corporation), announced that it was proceeding to construct the Quest Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project near Fort Saskatchewan. Quest is now capturing more than more than one…
The New in Microseismic-based Prediction of Ultimate Stage by Stage SRV Through Engineering
Claudio Virues
Microseismic monitoring has become the approach most often employed to gain an in-situ understanding of the rock’s response during hydraulic fracture stimulations. The utilization of distributed geophone arrays around treatments has provided an opportunity to investigate the way these fractures develop by examining the microseismic events recorded during a stimulation.…
Introduction To April Focus: Engineering Geophysics
Mostafa Naghizadeh
In this issue of the RECORDER, our focus topic is Engineering Geophysics. The methods of geophysical prospecting can be utilized in a variety of engineering applications, providing valuable information to improve the safety and reduce the costs of projects. These applications cover a wide range of environmental, mining, civil, geotechnical,…
Geophysical Applications to Construction Engineering Projects
Alastair McClymont, Paul Bauman, Eric Johnson, and Laurie Pankratow
“Drill, baby, drill!” It’s an often quoted line, made famous by former US Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. For those of us who work in the field of engineering geophysics, the mantra should be “drill sparingly, baby, drill sparingly”. While there is no substitute for direct sampling of the ground, the…
Terminology for fluid-injection induced seismicity in oil and gas operations
David W. Eaton, Mirko van der Baan and Allan Ingelson
A glossary of terms, applicable to fluid-injection induced seismicity in oil and gas operations, is compiled from various sources. Creation, adoption and widespread use of standard definitions for induced seismicity and related terms will promote consistency and uniformity and will help to avoid confusion that may arise if different definitions…
A Cheat Sheet on Induced Seismicity
Neda Boroumand and Samira Maghsoudi
We begin by defining a few key terms: “induced seismicity” refers to a seismic event that is caused by pore pressure and stress change associated with human activity, “potentially induced seismicity” describes an induced seismic event that is coincidental with human activity, “microseismicity” are small scale induced seismic events related…
Value of Integrated Geophysics – Microseismic-Derived Ultimate Expected Fracture Half-Length in SRV in a Multi-Staged Pad in the Horn River Basin
Claudio Virues, Jessica Budge, Eric Von Lunen
Over the past decade, microseismic (MS) monitoring has become the approach often used to gain an in-situ understanding of the rock’s response during stimulation. Recently, the utilization of downhole monitoring of treatments has provided for an opportunity to investigate the way these fractures develop by examining microseismic events recorded during…
Forensic Data Processing – Revealing Your Data’s Hidden Stories
Joe Dellinger
We are asking for more and more from our seismic data: more efficient acquisition, broader bandwidth (both high and low), sources that are more environmentally friendly (i.e. quieter), accurate amplitudes for AVO and 4D. Acquisition and processing are undergoing a revolution to support these needs. New developments such as simultaneous…
Introduction To March Focus: GeoConvention Preview
Rob Holt
The late, great Tom Podivinsky said "for generating prospects, fundamentally we look at whatever everyone else is doing and then copy them" in his RECORDER interview (January, 2014). Let us also not forget that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I always look forward to attending the GeoConvention. It…
Finding Sweet-Spots and Quantifying Recovery Potential in Unconventional Plays:
Using the Montney Play as an example of how a Common Risk Segment Mapping approach can be applied to quantifying Estimated Ultimate Recovery in pervasive hydrocarbon systems
Ian J. Cockerill and Aaron W. Hughes
hen liquids-rich parts of the Montney Play in northeast British Columbia (NEBC) emerged and began to be developed in late 2013 and 2014, ‘The Montney’ was thrust on to the scene as one of the most commercially attractive and compelling unconventional prospects in North America. A rush to find where…
Microseismic Geomechanics Interpretation of a Montney Hydraulic Fracture
Drew Chorney, Mike Smith and Shawn Maxwell
In this paper, we describe the use of a geomechanical model to interpret microseismicity recorded during a Montney hydraulic fracture treatment. The microseismic geomechanical model is calibrated to the recorded microseismicity and used to understand the complete fracture network, including the proppant distribution. The calibrated model is then used to…
Supercomputing Needs of our Industry
Satinder Chopra and Kurt J. Marfurt
The search for oil and gas has now moved into complex frontier areas such as the foothills in the onshore and into deeper waters and subsalt traps in the offshore, where geological risks are higher. The need to maximize the economic production of hydrocarbons in our current low price environment…
Reducing Uncertainty in Characterization of Vaca Muerta Fm Shale with Post-stack Seismic Data
Ritesh Kumar Sharma, Satinder Chopra, Luis Vernengo, Eduardo Trinchero and Claudio Sylwan
The Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Vaca Muerta (VM) Formation in the Neuquén Basin has served as an important source rock for many of the conventional oil and gas fields in Argentina. With the interest in developing and exploiting the shale resources in the country, many companies there have undertaken the characterization…
Preconditioning of Seismic Data Prior to Impedance Inversion
Satinder Chopra and Ritesh Kumar Sharma
The calibration of seismic data with the available well control is an important step that provides the link between seismic reflections, their stratigraphic interpretation and subsequent prediction of reservoir and fluid properties. The standard practice to do this has been to produce synthetic seismograms from well logs with a bandwidth…
The Oil Price and Seismic Exploration: A Roller Coaster Ride
Easton Wren
In any debate a historical perspective is useful since it tells us where we were and how we got here. It does not necessarily enable predicting the future. The ever changing oil price and the ups and downs of seismic exploration are ideal examples for looking into the past and…
Introduction To February Focus: Reservoir Geophysics
Marco Perez
Geophysics has a wide range of uses within the oil and gas industry. In the broadest sense, geophysical data is a representation of the earth’s interior. Geophysicists design experiments to ascertain properties such as structure, geomorphology and even mapping hydrocarbon reservoirs. Reservoir geophysics can mean a number of different things…
A Reservoir Characterization Strategy for the Flemish Pass Basin, Offshore Newfoundland and Labrador
Chris Blackwood and Gary Thorpe
In frontier deep water exploration settings such as the Flemish Pass offshore Newfoundland and Labrador, wells are uncommon and are often separated by tens of kilometres or more. Given the scarcity of well data, well-to-seismic calibrations must be extrapolated over large distances. Seismic interpretation and analysis drives the understanding of…
