Articles

CSEG Changing of the Guard

John L.J. Duhault

While the CSEG Board of Directors would not consider themselves “sentries” they are however, custodians of the not-for-profit association: Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists, your society.

Forecasting Bitumen State

D. Gray, D. Todorovic-Marinic, G. Larson, J. Zhang, D.J. Naidu, M. Letizia, K.A. Wagner, and M. Palka

In Memoriam: Dr. Kenneth Duckworth

Neda Boroumand, David Henley and Amanda Hall

Ken Duckworth, retired Professor of Geophysics at the University of Calgary, died peacefully on the evening of February 18, 2018 at the Foothills Hospital.

In Memoriam: Peter Boyd

Ann Mooney

It is with great sadness that we share with you the passing of Peter Boyd, co-founder of Arcis Corporation.

How Widespread is Human-Induced Seismicity in the United States & Canada?

Mirko van der Baan

There has been significant public and scientific interest in the observation of changed seismicity rates in North America since 2008, possibly due to human activities. We find that the seismicity rate in Oklahoma between 2008 and 2016 is strongly correlated to increased hydrocarbon production.

Introduction to March Focus: Salt and Subsalt Imaging in the Gulf of Mexico

Quincy Zhang

Subsalt imaging is one of the most critical technologies driving exploration to farther and deeper frontier areas in the Gulf of Mexico. For almost every project about subsalt imaging in the Gulf of Mexico, the three most important issues always are...

Salt Modeling Challenges and Strategies in the Mississippi Canyon, Gulf of Mexico

Quincy Zhang, Cristina Reta-Tang and Gary Rodriguez

In the Mississippi Canyon a unique characteristic of salt geometries are their stacking hourglass shapes – autochthonous Louann salt forms the lower part, allochthonous Mesozoic salt forms the middle part, and a Cenozoic salt canopy forms the shallow part. Due to this unique characteristic and the numerous overhangs common in…

Enhancing Salt and Subsalt Imaging in Deep Water, Gulf of Mexico, with Common Offset RTM Gathers

Jianshun Sheng, Seung Yoo, Cristina Reta-Tang and Gary Rodriguez

We focus on extracting new value from previously acquired orthogonal WAZ surveys in the Mississippi Canyon area where some of the largest and still active deep water discoveries reside. Some analyses estimate that many large subsalt/presalt fields can still be discovered. In this study, the subsalt images which are critical…

Post-migration Coherent Noise Removal by Dip Decomposition to Enhance Subsalt Imaging in the Gulf of Mexico

Hongyan Li, Peter Winther, Carlos Espinoza, George Zhao, and Neeraj Duhoon

In the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), with complex salt geometry, it is not unusual to see coherent noise in subsalt imaging. Such noise is detrimental to subsalt exploration and appraisal as it often leads to incorrect interpretations. The coherent noise is related to converted waves, intra-salt multiples, residual free-surface multiples, seismic data acquisition noise, and…

Enhancement of Seismic Monitoring in Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

Enrico Caffagni and Götz Bokelmann

The oil and gas industry is currently undergoing an extended period of instability. Technology can be leveraged to improve these difficult circumstances. The challenge is to develop ground-breaking technologies that help manage new projects more efficiently. At the same time, there is a tremendous need for technology to ensure a…

A Glimpse into the World of Seismic Attributes

Rainer Tonn

The Flemish Pass, offshore east coast Canada, has been an area of increased exploration activity since the discovery of Bay du Nord in 2013. The Flemish Pass is one of the core exploration areas within Statoil’s international portfolio. Additional recent discoveries have demonstrated further exploration success, while the award of…

Why We Should Perform PSDM and Calculate Seismic Attributes in the Depth Domain, Examples from the Woodford Formation

Marianne Rauch-Davies

We are commonly challenged to generate a drill plan in depth from time migrated seismic. In order to meet the needs of interpreters and drillers, PSTM volumes are frequently converted to pseudo depth volumes by stretching. This process affects every part of the drill planning procedure as these pseudo-depth data…

Introduction to January Focus: Emerging Technologies: Machine Learning

Hoda Rashedi

Surprisingly, the first time I was exposed to the basic concept of Machine Learning was at one of my undergraduate course called, “Philosophy of mind”. That was the first time, I was learning about how our brain functioning and how it could be biased. The year after, I took General…

A Gentle Introduction to Machine Learning

Mark Dahl

Machine learning has generated a lot of excitement in recent years. It is only a matter of time before machine learning becomes commonplace in geoscience. There are many reasons for this that I could argue, but two come immediately to mind: machine learning has enjoyed incredible success in similar data-rich…

Machine Learning in Geoscience V: Introduction to Classification with SVMs

Matteo Niccoli

In this machine learning tutorial, I intend to provide readers with an intuitive understanding of how Support Vector Machines (SVMs) work and how they are used to solve classification problems. I will utilize Scikit-learn [2], a Python library, and a few toy datasets inspired by classic examples with an added…

Geochemical Facies Analysis Using Unsupervised Machine Learning

Brendon Hall

This tutorial will demonstrate step-by-step how to build a practical geoscience machine learning workflow using Python and scikit-learn. The practice of extracting insights from large datasets has certainly caught mainstream attention in recent years. Software packages are emerging with multivariate statistics and machine learning algorithms built in to workflows. As…

Denoising Seismic Records with Image Translation Networks

Graham Ganssle

Denoising data is the essence of discovery. Raw seismic data are a jumbled collection of bits bearing little resemblance to geology. All of the steps in the seismic data processing workflow, including deconvolution, migration, and stacking are noise reduction techniques designed by geophysicists to highlight a certain type of signal…

Properties of Propagating Wavelets with Severe Short-Period Internal Multiples

Fred Hilterman and Leila NAILI DOUAOUDA

Seismic waves propagating through cyclical thin beds, which have a large acoustic impedance (AI) contrast to the surrounding sedimentary sequence, have distinct wavelet signatures. At depth, the wavelets have a low-frequency Gaussian-shaped signal followed by high-frequency noise coda. These complex wavelets often yield seismic with discontinuous primary reflections that have…

Forecasting bitumen state and production from 3C-4D seismic

David Gray and Dragana Todorovic-Marinic

Assessing the liquid state of bitumen and its production is now possible from 4D seismic. From conventional 4D seismic data, steam chamber volume can be determined. From 3C-4D (3-component, 4-dimensional) PS (P-wave down, converted S-wave up) seismic data, the liquid state of the bitumen, immediately produceable bitumen, and future produceable…

Introduction to December Focus: Developments in Groundwater Geophysics

Melvyn Best

Issues related to groundwater continue to grow in importance throughout the world, and geoscience techniques to deal with these issues are developing rapidly. Methods are needed to map the extent and quality of groundwater resources, water depletion and pollution, and subsurface flow related to engineering projects such as dams. Increasingly,…