Articles
Intro to December Focus: Land Seismic in Complex Basins
Rob Kendall
Welcome to this special issue of the RECORDER, with a focus on land seismic in complex basins which presents three papers on land acquisition, new recording equipment, acquisition planning, and resulting improvements in imaging and interpretation.
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Cableless Seismic Acquisition
Rob Kendall
Cableless, wireless or cable-free (we will use the term cableless in this discussion) seismic recording systems do not transfer data back to a central recording system and they do not transfer power to multiple stations through cables. The majority of them are autonomous with the data being recorded on flash…
Imaging the Overturned Limb of a Footwall Syncline and its Impact on Exploration in Fold and Thrust Belts
Andrew C. Newson
The hydrocarbon exploration of the Western Canada Fold and Thrust Belt (WCFTB) is over 100 years old. For the last 70 years it has been greatly aided by seismic imaging techniques which have provided an understanding of the deep structures. Even so, this process is still full of surprises as…
Land Seismic Acquisition Testing Strategies and Results – Southern Chad, Africa 2013-2015
Andrea Crook, Paul Stephenson and Chaminda Sandanayake
Seismic acquisition testing provided tremendous benefit by improving subsurface imaging, increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs. Test results were used to improve operations in real time as data was being acquired, with the cooperation of seismic contractor BGP International (Chad). This paper will provide an overview of the seismic acquisition…
CSEG 2016/2017 Executive Election
Review of Candidiates for 2016-2017 CSEG Executive Election.
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Intro to November Focus: Programming in Geoscience
Matteo Niccoli
There have been two instances so far during my career as a geoscientist in which programming has been the key ingredient to solving a problem. The first was in 2003 during my graduate research work at the University of Calgary. I was tasked with the analysis of multicomponent data recorded…
“Small software” to the Rescue
Steve Lynch
Over the years I have heard Software Development described any number of ways. The one that fits best is to me the statement that it is “a celebration of the brute force machismo of mutant hero developers”. I don’t know about the hero part but I am certainly one of…
Open Collaboration: Hackathons and Tomorrow’s Subsurface Software
Matt Hall
There’s a quiet revolution happening in subsurface science and engineering software. The last one happened about 12 years ago when powerful Linux and Windows PCs dropped under $20k and displaced Sun workstations, lowering the bar to fast, attractive 3D visualization. But, looking back, it happened in slow motion and at…
Feasibility in Setting up a Rayleigh Wave Explorer in Matlab
Enrico Caffagni
The word ‘Program’ (Wiktionary, 2006) derived from Ancient Greek πρόγραμμα (prógramma, “a written public notice, an edict”), from the verb προγράφω (prográphō, πρό (pró, “before”) + γράφω (gráphō, “I write”)). ‘If I write before’, I should have already planned and thought what to write. Programming is conceptually related to an…
Programming a Seismic Program
Evan Bianco and Matt Hall
Programming is becoming an increasingly useful skill for the modern geoscientist. I don’t mean to suggest that all geoscientists should become software developers and start making full-blown desktop software applications. But programming can and will super-charge your work, making you more productive and more thorough.
... Learning by Doing
Matteo Niccoli
If you want to install Python, which you would need to run many of the resources in this section, I recommend using the Anaconda free Python distribution, which can be used for both noncommercial and commercial purposes, and redistributed: http://continuum.io/downloads, and includes all the main scientific computing libraries you will…
Geophysics in a Time of Cheap Oil
Leon Thomsen
The world is currently producing about a million barrels of oil more than it uses, every day. So, the price of oil has decreased, following a well-known “law of economics” This has put enormous financial pressure on all producers, especially the high-cost producers in the new shale resource plays. So,…
Introduction to October Focus: Conjugate Margins
Deric Cameron and Ian Atkinson
This October 2015 issue of the RECORDER focuses on the Atlantic conjugate margins. Most of the basins of the margins of Eastern Canada are still under-explored despite ongoing production in some basins since the 1990’s. Exploration activity in Eastern Canada has recently been invigorated by Statoil and Husky’s success in…
Evidence for Hyper-extended Continental Crust in the East Orphan Basin from Seismic Reflection Data
J. Kim Welford, Deric Cameron, James Carter and Richard Wright
The Eastern Newfoundland offshore region has experienced a resurgence in exploration activity over recent years, spurred on by several significant petroleum discoveries in the Flemish Pass Basin, northeast and along geological trend from the world-class deposits in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin. In 2012 and 2013, PGS, TGS, and Nalcor Energy…
Source Rocks and Petroleum Systems of the Scotian Basin
Ricardo L. Silva, Carlos Wong, and Grant Wach
Recently, the term petroleum source rock became a buzz word in the geological vocabulary. This is due, in great part, to the development of unconventional gas plays in several locations around North America and Europe. Source rocks are central in hydrocarbon research because they are an essential element of any…
Exploration in Frontier Areas and Deep-Water Settings: Integration of Disciplines and Universality of Rock Properties
Alsing Selnes, Alex Edwards, and Sam Green
Rock physics describes a reservoir rock using physical properties such as porosity, rigidity and compressibility; these properties affect how seismic waves physically travel through the rocks. The rock physicist seeks to establish relationships between these material properties and the observed seismic response, and to develop a predictive theory so that…
The Regional Alberta Observatory for Earthquake Studies Network (RAVEN)
Ryan Schultz and Virginia Stern
In light of recent induced seismicity, there is a renewed interest in understanding the seismic setting of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). While the observation of induced seismic events is not new to the WCSB (e.g., Wetmiller et al., 1986; Horner et al., 1994; Baranova et al., 1999; Schultz…
In Memoriam of George D. Hobson
George passed away peacefully, in his 93rd year, at home surrounded by family. George attended Delta Collegiate (a high school well known to Hamiltonians) and was Student President in 1940-41. He received a degree from McMaster University in Mathematics and Physics and then a Master’s degree from the University of…
Concepts and Applications of Imaging with Multiples and Primaries
Dan Whitmore
The goal of seismic acquisition and processing is to create a well-sampled image of the subsurface. Broadband acquisition has expanded the useable low and high frequencies of the seismic signal. Multistreamer acquisition provides a much greater receiver sampling. Wide- and full-azimuth acquisition and longer offsets have improved the azimuthal and…
