Articles
The Art of Acquisition
Jason Nelson
What a time to be asked to write an article about seismic acquisition! The prices of oil and gas have dropped off the map while the credit facilities of the world have all but closed their doors keeping capital investment in new projects at a stand still. Seismic being a…
Islands of Time – Microevolution
Linden Achen
Every year the CSPG Honorary Address committee brings a guest speaker to Calgary. The committee attempts to identify topics that are topical and interesting to our members, the geo-science community and the general public. The 2009 CSPG Honorary Address in association with the CSEG and APEGGA will hold the talk…
Using Timelapse Seismic to Monitor the THAI™ Heavy Oil Production Process
Rob Kendall
Toe-to-Heel-Air-Injection (THAI™) is an in-situ combustion process that is used for the recovery of bitumen and heavy oil. It combines a horizontal production well with a vertical air injection well placed at the toe. Compressional and shear velocities for heavy oil are extremely sensitive to temperature. As the oil is…
OETR Association Play Fairway Program: Using geoscience to revitalise interest in exploring Nova Scotia’s Offshore
OETR Association
The OETR (Offshore Energy Technical Research) Association has initiated an industry standard Play Fairway Analysis and Geoscience Data Package program. This program is intended to serve a pivotal role in stimulating industry interest in exploration of Nova Scotia’s offshore petroleum resources by providing explorers with critical information about prospectivity and…
Basin and Petroleum Systems Modeling at the Jeanne d’Arc and Carson Basin offshore Newfoundland, Canada
Friedemann Baur and Hans Wielens, Ralf Littke
Demand for energy is growing rapidly, causing worldwide concerns over security of supply. Petroleum systems modeling in 4 dimensions (space + time) predicts the generation, migration, and quality/quantity of accumulated hydrocarbons, incorporating temperature and pressure calculations through the entire evolution of the basin. A Petroleum Systems Model thus provides the…
Broadband Seismic Array Deployment and Data Analysis in Alberta
Yu Jeffrey Gu, Ahmet Okeler, Sean Contenti, Kenny Kocon, Luyi Shen, Keith Brzak
The availability and fidelity of broadband seismic instruments in recent years have greatly accelerated worldwide research on ground motion and seismic structure. Equipped with instruments that are capable of digitally recording signals across a wide frequency band (0.01-100 Hz), earthquake seismologists no longer need to contend with analogue records, limited…
Making Sense of all that AVO Stuff
Brian Russell
Over the last few years, a multitude of new and different AVO (Amplitude Variations with Offset) and pre-stack inversion techniques have been developed, all of which put a slightly different spin on the way we extract information about the fluids and rock types within our reservoir. For the working interpreter,…
The role of reverse time migration in complex imaging
Denes Vigh, E. William Starr and Jerry Kapoor
In depth imaging, after the Kirchhoff method, wave equation techniques have been used most widely in the industry, especially in subsalt imaging. Traditional wave equation migrations use one-way downward continuation and this is why turning ray is not incorporated into these algorithms. Therefore, in order to image the salt face,…
Application of seismic curvature attribute in the appraisal of the Tishrine-West field, North-East Syria
Nilanjan Ganguly, David Dearborn, Mike Moore, Don Gordon, Mary Horan, and Satinder Chopra
The Tishrine-West field is located in North-East Syria and has been producing since 1978. In 2005, Tanganyika Oil assumed operatorship of this field as a part of its ownership commitment of the Tishrine block. 3D seismic data was acquired in 2006, and subsequent interpretation and attribute analysis, followed by drilling,…
APEGGA Summit Awards® Recognize Engineering and Geoscience Excellence
APEGGA
Calgary – Hundreds of individuals in the engineering and geoscience communities honoured their peers at the 2009 Summit Awards® Gala, Thursday, April 23 at the TELUS Convention Centre. The event, hosted by The Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA), acknowledges outstanding individuals for their accomplishments in…
New Science Centre 2011 Project
Maureen Henderson
What is the New Science Centre 2011 Project? For those individuals from the geoscience community who did not attend the recent ‘model tour’ presentation at TELUS World of Science – Calgary, this might be a tough question to answer. In our quest to bring clarity to this question, our hope…
Lessons Learned from 3-D Seismic Attribute Studies of Hydrothermal Dolomite Reservoirs
Bruce S. Hart, Justine A. Sagan, and Osareni C. Ogiesoba
Hydrothermal dolomite reservoirs present special exploration and development problems that are important to seismic interpreters. The productive, porous dolomites can be present at various stratigraphic levels and are typically associated with complex faulting and fracture networks (Figure 1). These structures acted as conduits for the dolomitizing, and porosity generating, fluids.…
Preliminary Evaluation of a Potential Major Petroleum Province from BeaufortSPAN™ Seismic Data: Canadian Arctic Passive Margin, Banks Island Segment
Naresh Kumar, James Helwig, and Menno G. Dinkelman
Because of its thick sediment wedge and large structures, the exploration focus in Arctic Canada has been on Beaufort- Mackenzie Delta for more than thirty years. This effort has resulted in 48 oil and gas discoveries with a combined volume in excess of 1 billion barrels equivalent (Chen and others,…
The Sound of Sonic: A Historical Perspective and Introduction to Acoustic Logging
D. Close, D. Cho, F. Horn, and H. Edmundson
It is fair to say that surface seismic data are the staple of the typical oilfield geophysicist’s diet and that gamma ray and porosity logs provide the nutrients required by petrophysicists and geologists. The acoustic, or sonic, log, however, is the ketchup (or condiment of choice) used liberally by both…
Integrating Seismic Acquisition and Processing
Jack Bouska
Years of seismic specialization among practicing geophysicists have segregated acquisition, processing, and interpretation into separate functions, which makes it difficult for any individual to treat the whole seismic process as a single integrated system.
... Geophysical Well Logs from a Shallow Test Well and Automatic Determination of Formation Velocities from Full-Waveform Sonic Logs
J. Wong, L. Han, R.R. Stewart, L.R. Bentley, and J.C. Bancroft
Shallow VSP and geophysical well logging surveys were undertaken in a 127 m-deep well located at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory site near Priddis, Alberta. The well was drilled through interbedded sands and shales of the Paskapoo Formation. A suite of geophysical well logs (including natural gamma-ray, normal resistivity, focusedbeam resistivity,…
Processing Considerations for 3D VSP
Richard Kuzmiski, Bob Charters and Mike Galbraith
VSP surveys have long been known to produce superior reflection images compared to images from surface seismic. The literature is rife with examples showing the advantages of the VSP method. This paper shows how 2D and 3D VSP data is processed with practical state-of-the-art technology and algorithms. The key steps…
Microseismic Location Uncertainty
Shawn Maxwell
Microseismic imaging is a common technique for mapping hydraulic fractures. Accurate imaging of the source location of the microseisms is critical for accurate fracture mapping. In this paper, two simple synthetic examples are presented which demonstrate the mislocation that could result from data and velocity model errors. Location errors resulting…
A New View of the Continent Beneath Our Feet – LITHOPROBE’S Scientific, Economic and Social Contributions
Ron M. Clowes
LITHOPROBE is Canada’s national, collaborative, multidisciplinary, Earth science research project established to develop a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of the northern half of North America. Canada’s landmass and continental margin are a complex geological mosaic representing four billion years of continental growth, destruction and reorganization. How the current configuration…
