Articles

Temperature versus political transparency: Does heat corrupt us?

Robert R. Stewart

Human discomfort increases at elevated temperatures (above about 27°C or 81°F). Higher temperatures impact our ability to work accurately and productively as well as to learn. Irritability and inclination to anger can increase, too. Transparency International is an organization that evaluates countries according to their political transparency – a value…

Integrated fluid-flow, geomechanic and seismic modelling for reservoir characterisation

D.A. Angus, J.P. Verdon, Q.J. Fisher, J-M. Kendall, J.M. Segura, T.G. Kristiansen, A.J.L. Crook, S. Skachkov, J. Yu and M. Dutko

Solutions to large number of problems facing the petroleum industry during exploration, appraisal and production require integration of knowledge and workflows from a range of disciplines including geology, petroleum engineering, geomechanics, rock physics, petro-physics and geophysics; in the future CO2 storage projects will also require such an integrated approach. Over…

Geomechanics: Bridging the Gap from Geophysics to Engineering in Unconventional Reservoirs

Kurt Wikel

Oilfield Geomechanics has a broad range of definitions, and depending on who you ask you may get a different answer. To this author, in its simplest form, it encompasses the study of how stresses and strains within the earth affect what we drill into and explore for. The magnitude and…

One “Grasshopper” at a time

John Fernando

As the academic year at SAIT comes to a close with all that is left being the grading of final exams and submitting of the grades, it is a time to reflect on my memories of yesteryear.

The New Wave in Geophysics

Tom Sneddon

Recently, John Townsley, P.Geoph. who is now Past-President of the CSEG, wrote at length about the changing demographic landscape in the geophysics profession and industry sector. His point of departure was an address to the APEGGA Calgary Branch by Kim Farwell, P.Eng., APEGGA President. The “good news” portion of his…

Virtual source method for imaging and monitoring below complex overburden

Andrey Bakulin

Increasing overburden complexity can eventually destroy any type of surface imaging. While it may become intractable to unravel complex wave propagation in processing, it is always possible to capture it with measurement. The virtual source method uses surface shots with downhole receivers placed below the most complex part of the…

Compressive sensing in seismic exploration: an outlook on a new paradigm

Felix J. Herrmann, Haneet Wason, and Tim T.Y. Lin

Many seismic exploration techniques rely on the collection of massive data volumes that are subsequently mined for information during processing. While this approach has been extremely successful in the past, current efforts toward higher resolution images in increasingly complicated regions of the Earth continue to reveal fundamental shortcomings in our…

Neural network analysis and impedance inversion – Case study

Somanath Misra and Satinder Chopra

Inversion of post-stack seismic data is routinely done to obtain information about the P-wave impedance, which provides reliable information about the reservoir lithological properties. The most commonly used method for estimating P-impedance from the seismic traces is the model based inversion. This method requires an initial model and a wavelet…

Interesting pursuits in seismic curvature attribute analysis

Satinder Chopra and Kurt J. Marfurt

Since they are second-order derivatives, seismic curvature attributes can enhance subtle information that may be difficult to see using first-order derivatives such as the dip magnitude and the dip-azimuth attributes. As a result, these attributes form an integral part of most seismic interpretation projects. In this article we discuss some…

Extracting meaningful information from seismic attributes

Satinder Chopra

Seismic attributes are a powerful aid to seismic interpretation. They allow the geoscientist to interpret faults and channels, recognize the depositional environment, and unravel the structural deformation history more rapidly. By combining information from adjacent seismic samples and traces using a physical model (such as dip and azimuth, waveform similarity,…

Geophysics and a Reserve Audit Perspective

Doug Uffen

It is a yearly exercise that plays out for every oil and gas company in Canada. Due to National Instrument NI 51-101, producing oil and gas companies report their reserves on an annual basis. Through this process, companies wish to have their efforts and achievements recognized as having added value…

Quantify the Economic Value of Geophysical Information

David Gray

Geophysics is one of the best tools to identify hydrocarbons in the absence of well control. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has allowed the use of “Reliable Technology” in reserve estimation for disclosure purposes. Therefore, the use of new technologies presents a significant opportunity for geophysics to become…

Advances in “True Volume” Interpretation of Structure and Stratigraphy in 3D Volumes

Geoffrey A. Dorn

The use of 3-D seismic interpretation and visualization in today’s industry has become pervasive in exploration and development. All modern 3-D interpretation systems and many well path planning systems use 3-D visualization as the base display for the interaction required to conduct the work at hand. However, the tools and…

Integration of Surface Seismic and Microseismic Part 2: Understanding Hydraulic Fracture Variability

Shawn Maxwell, David Cho and Mark Norton

Integration of microseismicity and reservoir properties has been used to design better well placement, improved stimulations and enhanced production of wells in the Montney shale in NE British Columbia, Canada. In a companion paper, observations were presented of how reservoir heterogeneity in terms of Poisson’s ratio and pre-existing faults impacted…

Mixed-phase wavelet estimation – A case study

Somanath Misra and Satinder Chopra

An accurate estimation of wavelet is crucial in the deconvolution of seismic data. As per the convolution model, the recorded seismic trace is the result of convolution of the earth’s unknown reflectivity series with the propagating seismic source wavelet along with the additive noise. The deconvolution of the source wavelet…

Quantitative estimates of fracture density variations: further perspectives

Lee Hunt, Scott Reynolds, Tyson Brown, and Scott Hadley; Jon Downton and Satinder Chopra

We have undertaken a quantitative investigation of the accuracy of surface seismic attributes in predicting fracture density variations within the Nordegg Formation in West Central Alberta. These results were first discussed at the GeoCanada 2010 convention (Hunt et al, 2010) and also published in The Leading Edge (Hunt et al,…

Integration of Surface Seismic and Microseismic for the Characterization of a Shale Gas Reservoir

Mark Norton, Wayne Hovdebo, David Cho, Shawn Maxwell, Mike Jones

Unconventional resources such as shale and tight gas plays require engineering disciplines to develop solutions to achieve economic production levels. However, reservoir heterogeneity as seen in various forms of data has prompted for a better understanding of reservoir properties to optimize drilling and completion programs.

Seismic methods for reservoir characterization…

Shale Gas and Geophysical Developments

Dave Monk, David Close, Marco Perez, and Bill Goodway

Natural gas has an eclectic mix of interest groups promoting its increased utilization. Environmentalists are focused on the reductions in CO2 and particulate emissions relative to coal for base electricity generation. North American based gas suppliers stress the increased energy security of using domestic energy sources and the potential to…

The Shale Mystery Tour (Europe)

John Logel

Shale gas is nothing new to North America. The first known shale producing well was in New York State in 1820. Although, if you look at conferences, journal articles, and contractor offerings; it might appear to be a new and exciting area of oil and gas business. The change occurred…

Rumblings from the Laboratory: Past, Present, and Future

Carl Sondergeld

The complexity of rocks in nature, and its resultant imprint on rock properties, makes empirical laboratory studies necessary and relevant. Numerous efforts are underway in academia and industry to try and use theoretical models to predict petrophysical and seismic rock properties from microscale images of rocks. However, modeling can only…