Articles

Stratigraphic Detail From Wavelet Based Spectral Imaging

Adam Gersztenkorn and John Smythe, Barbara Radovich

Seismic interpretation has been based traditionally on seismic reflectivity strengths measured by amplitude. Modern workstations and interpretation software calculate a wide variety of attributes based on seismic amplitudes. Historically, analyses based solely on amplitude have posed a number of significant problems for the interpreter. Reflection amplitudes in seismic data are…

Light Up The World Foundation

Light Up The World Foundation (LUTW) is an international humanitarian organization affiliated with the University of Calgary dedicated to illuminating the lives of the world’s poor. There are over two billion people in the world without access to electricity. When night falls, their only source of light is usually a…

Great Challenges and Opportunities in Geophysics: the state of our technology, our business and the SEG

Craig Beasley

The profession of Geophysics faces significant challenges today. No doubt, the ability of our technology to remotely image the subsurface has provided significant value to the oil and gas industry. The competitive business climate of the oil industry continues to pit geophysical technologies against other alternative means of increasing production…

The Challenges of Change in the Exploration Industry

David Bartesko and Laurice Block

If there’s one thing that’s been constant in the geophysical industry for the past 10 years, it is, ironically, change. Adjusting to change is an ongoing challenge to industry. Over the past decade, companies and individuals have critically assessed the way exploration has been planned and conducted, and this has…

“Change is good donkey!”

Rod Garland

For those who don’t have kids, the above is a line from the movie Shrek. It also epitomizes the reality of field seismic contracting services over the past few years. Sure, sometimes we have to be dragged into the future, kicking and screaming, as we are by nature, conservative or…

Seismic–Managing the Risk

Ken Lengyel

Seismic data is recognized throughout the Oil and Gas industry as one of the tools available to industry that can have a significant positive effect on the F&D (Finding & Development) costs associated with developing a company’s reserve base. Unfortunately, within the Oil and Gas industry the inherent risk of…

Attributes in color: the early years

Nigel Anstey

Every old-timer lives for the day when someone will ask about the good old days. I need to start back in the mists. Even the early pioneers in seismics saw that there must be more to the seismic waveform than travel time. After the important clarifications given by Norman Ricker,…

Seismic Attributes – some recollections

Roy Lindseth

Few geophysicists can recall the days when a seismic record meant an 8 inch wide, 4 foot long banner of paper carrying 24 seismic traces. Each trace of each seismic event was carefully picked and the time of the reflection inked by hand. Even at that early time seismic attributes…

Significant Discoveries Marked ‘04

It may not have been a year for elephant discoveries, but in 2004 a number of important wildcats added to the world’s reserve inventory potentials.

Ensuring Effective Basic Safety Awareness Training for Field Personnel

Dave Berte

In this age of increasing liability and requirements to ensure employee competency and safety in the workplace, employers are faced with the ever-increasing responsibility of providing effective training to employees, especially new employees, and those who undertake new or different duties. Where can employees go to get direction and assistance…

Limitations of Deterministic and Advantages of Stochastic Seismic Inversion

Ashley Francis

Inversion techniques to estimate impedance from seismic have been available to geophysicists for over twenty years. Conventional methods are referred to as ”deterministic” and are based on the minimisation of an error term between the forward convolution of the reflectivity from an estimated impedance profile and the seismic amplitudes at…

CSEG History – A Random “On-Line” Browse

Ron Larson

An issue of the RECORDER with a specific focus on “Historical Perspectives” should have some kind of article on the CSEG’s own history. Fortunately much material has already been assembled and has been installed on the CSEG website. Notable, the Society’s web site contains significant excerpts from David Finch’s 1985…

The Canadian Seismic Data Brokerage Business

A Conversation with Barry Korchinski

In November 2004, Barry Korchinski sat down with Carmen Swalwell and Ron Larson of the RECORDER for a discussion about the evolution of seismic data brokerage in Canada. Mr. Korchinski is something of a CSEG notable: CSEG President in 1995, and recipient of the Meritorious Service Award. He has been…

Another Look at MEMS Sensors… and Dynamic Range

John Gibson and Roy Burnett

In an October 2003 CSEG RECORDER article, Tessman and Maxwell discuss the importance of vector fidelity in full-wave recording and the key design elements in achieving good fidelity. One important design element relates to tilt measurement and the proposed need for a sensor to be force balanced against gravity. Figure…

Modelling and imaging of an impact structure

Matteo Niccoli

Of the more than 150 impact craters currently known, approximately 25% are associated with economic deposits and 17 are being actively exploited (Grieve and Masaytis, 1994). Brown (2002) highlighted the two most interesting aspects about the petroleum potential of impact craters: 1) mixed breccia deposits that formed during the impact…

Field Techniques

Helen Isaac

In these reminiscences from the Oral History project, eminent geophysicists remember what it was like to work in the field in the days before the technological revolution.

Microseismic and Time-lapse Seismic Monitoring of a Heavy Oil Extraction Process at Peace River, Canada

Peter McGillivray

Peace River is Shell Canada’s in situ heavy oil production operation in northwestern Alberta, with estimated bitumen in place of 7 billion barrels. The current production strategy is to use multi-lateral horizontal wells to steam the bitumen saturated sand reservoir and to then use the same horizontal wells to produce…

Reservoir Characterization and Heavy Oil Production

Larry Lines, Ying Zou, and Joan Embleton

Given the prediction that most of Alberta oil production in the 21st Century will come from existing heavy oil fields, there is a growing demand for the synergistic integration of geology, geophysics, and reservoir engineering in order to optimize production from these fields. Effective reservoir characterization and production will require…

Reservoir characterization by combining time-lapse seismic analysis with reservoir simulation

Ying Zou, Laurence Bentley and Laurence Lines

This study integrates time lapse seismic methods with reservoir simulation to image a steam front and by-passed oil at the Pikes Peak heavy oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada. Two seismic 2D surveys, acquired in 1991 and 2000, respectively, had been reprocessed to preserve amplitudes. Cyclical steam stimulation (CSS) of the…

Multi-Disciplinary Geoscience: The ‘Brenda’ North Sea Development

Ian Jones, R. Christensen, J. Haynes, J. Faragher, I. Novianti, H. Morris and G. Pickering

The North Sea is a mature hydrocarbon province, with many fields having passed their production peak, and some fields even abandoned. As part of an incentive programme to encourage new exploration and/or revitalization of existing or abandoned fields, the UK government has introduced a number of schemes in recent years,…