Articles
Introduction To April Focus: Land Seismic
Rob Vestrum
The papers in this section on Land Seismic were inspired by the Land Seismic Workshop in Banff, September 23 to 25, 2014. The workshop was jointly held by the CSEG and the EAGE, and the technical sessions included as much discussion time as presentation time. Our vision was to collect…
On the use of coincident shots and receivers in Megabin geometry and in orthogonal geometry
Gijs J. O. Vermeer
Recently two papers were published in the RECORDER that dealt with a comparison of Megabin geometry with orthogonal geometry in the context of 5D interpolation (Duncan et al., 2014; Harger and Schweigert, 2014). What struck me is the use of coincident shots and receivers in the Megabin geometries and also…
The advantages of applying cableless technology: A case study in Colombia
Hector A. Alfonso
The results and experiences from a 3D survey recently carried out by Ecopetrol and its partner Talisman, in the Llanos Basin of Colombia, are presented. More than 8000 channels patch on land were used for the first time in Colombia using cableless technology.
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Seismic exploration in extreme topography: Acquisition for optimal imaging
Mike Hall, Peter Maxwell, and Anna Leslie
Seismic exploration in areas of rugged and extreme topography is dangerous, difficult and expensive. Because of these environmental and economic factors it is not uncommon for data acquired in such areas to be inadequately sampled in space for imaging purposes. Also, long source-receiver offsets are often required in order to…
An integrated strategy: constrained tomography inversion of multi-type data for near surface velocity model building
Liansheng Liu, Lidong Gao and Zhiyu Zhang
After analyzing the theory assumptions and the pros and cons of three methods in near surface model building, which have been widely used in data processing, the three of us all agree that an “Integrated Strategy”, based on constrained first arrival tomography inversion, should be introduced as described in this…
CRS azimuth gathers and CRS shot gathers for improved fault imaging in Alpine 3D seismic data
Henning Trappe, Eliakim Schuenemann, Juergen Pruessmann, Sonja Suckro, Hans-Gert Linzer, Martin Schachinger
In a case study from the Austrian Alps, the capability of Common-Reflection-Surface processing (CRS) for comprehensive fault imaging and analysis is demonstrated. CRS processing is used to generally improve the signal-to-noise ratio and to regularize the dataset in different domains. We show an offset-azimuth regularization to generate well populated gathers…
Introduction to April Technical Articles
Amanda Knowles
Because we had a surplus of fantastic papers for last month’s Value of Integrated Geophysics (VIG) Edition, the April RECORDER carries a continuation of similarly themed articles.
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Geophysical Methods for Mapping a Shallow Unconsolidated Gas Sand
Rebecca Daniels and Brian Schulte
In southwest Saskatchewan Talisman Energy holds the surface to basement rights in several sections of land over an older Devonian Birdbear field. Producers in this area have re-visited this field, drilling for heavy oil in the thin, unconsolidated McLaren sands draped over Devonian highs. These new wells utilize Cold Heavy…
Reliable Geophysics
Marian C. Hanna and Doug Uffen
Geophysics rocks! If you are a geophysicist and you’re reading, this you know what geophysics can offer, but does your team know that too? It is fair to say that over the past ten (10) years, the E&P industry has seen a step increase in seismic acquisition and processing, especially…
Hierarchical Seismic Imaging: A Multiscale Approach
Jean Virieux
Different challenges of resources discovery and management, better mitigation of natural hazards, and acute understanding of the earth’s system require high-resolution imaging of the earth in more complex regions at various scales. Dense multicomponent surveys with a broad range of frequencies have been deployed by the industrial and academic communities…
Introduction To March Focus: Value of Integrated Geophysics
Amanda Knowles
For years I have lived my life by the mantra, ‘When you don’t know what to do, you know what to do: research!’ There is great comfort knowing that you can turn to history or more knowledgeable, experienced people to provide facts and guide you. This tactic can be applied…
Overview of VIG Columns in RECORDER: May 2013 – March 2014
George Fairs
As part of the VIG (Value of Integrated Geophysics) initiative, a series of articles and columns were published in the RECORDER from May 2013 until May 2014 inclusive. The purpose was to advance the use of geophysics for business purposes by educating and inspiring our readership. The articles and columns…
Articulating the time, cost, and benefits of a seismic processing project
Lee Hunt
The net value of seismic is measured in various ways, but is usually reduced to a calculation of what additional economic benefit we expect to gain from the seismic information, weighed against the cost of the seismic information itself. The costs of the seismic are typically assumed to be quite…
Rock Physics Driven Seismic Data Processing for the Athabasca Oil Sands, Northeastern Alberta
David Gray, Seann Day and Scott Schapper
Canada has the third largest oil reserves of any country in the world. The bulk of the economically recoverable oil reserves is bitumen found in Alberta; Alberta has 26.7 Gm3 of remaining crude bitumen reserves (Alberta Oil Sands Industry Quarterly Update, Summer 2013). The Athabasca Oil Sands reservoirs of Northeastern…
VOQC: Value Oriented Quality Control in Seismic Processing
Lee Hunt, Peter Cary, Dan Tican, Mike Perz, Ritesh Kumar Sharma, Nirupama Nagarajappa, Xinxiang Li, and Satinder Chopra
The practicality of carrying out similar work to that of our case study example may be debated by some. There is little doubt that the phase and scaling issues that we encountered do require further thought. Our approach of applying single constant phase corrections and amplitude scalers to the gathers…
Value In Integrated Geophysics Where Do We Go From Here?
John L.J. Duhault
You have now read or scanned through several articles that embrace the concept of adding value by illustrating how one can improve the return on capital for their own oil and gas properties. Where is the VIG going for 2015 and beyond?
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Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns in Land Exploration Seismology
Peter Cary
We geophysicists and geologists are generally not eager to compare ourselves with politicians. We are, after all, scientists who come to an understanding of nature from evidence of what is true rather from what we want to be true. But in this case Rumsfield’s efforts to infer definite conclusions about…
Introduction To February Focus: Electromagnetic Methods
Martyn Unsworth
This special issue of the CSEG RECORDER features three contributed articles describing recent developments in electromagnetic (EM) methods. While EM methods were some of the first geophysical methods to be developed for mineral exploration, they were rapidly surpassed by the number of seismic surveys undertaken in hydrocarbon exploration. Thus today…
Imaging SAGD steam chambers: traditional ERT vs broadband electromagnetic methods
Sarah G. R. Devriese and Douglas W. Oldenburg
The Athabasca oil sands, located in Northern Alberta, Canada, are one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Over the last 30 years, industry has developed the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) method to extract heavy oil that is too viscous to be extracted using conventional methods and is…
New developments in audio-magnetotelluric exploration: Case study from Darnley Bay area, N.W.T
David K. Goldak and Ryan W. Olson
Darnley Bay occurs within the Amundsen Gulf and is located within the Inuvialuit settlement region of the Western Canadian Arctic. It is home to one of the largest gravity anomalies in the world. With a diameter of approximately 60 km and an amplitude exceeding 130 mGal, the source of the…
