Articles
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,…
An efficient 3D explicit finite-difference prestack depth migration
J. Ren, C. Gerrard, J. McClean, M.Orlovich and A. Long
An explicit, constrained operator is presented here for wavefield extrapolation in 3D wave equation depth migration. The migration cost and image quality benefit from its reduced number of independent coefficients within the operator, negligible numerical anisotropy, and flexibility that allows for different propagation angles and step sizes in the inline…
Statistics Made Easy, Nineteen Times Out of Twenty
Jan Dewar
True story: An interpreter – new to AVO – upon being presented with P-reflectivity and S-reflectivity sections, said, “Two sections? I can hardly cope with just the structural stack section. How do you expect me to manage two?” Wouldn’t you have thought more information would make his job easier, not…
Fracture Detection using 3D Azimuthal AVO
David Gray and Dragana Todorovic-Marinic
The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of how well AVAZ (Amplitude Versus Angle and aZimuth) extractions from P-wave seismic data compare to more widely accepted measurements of fracture density and fracture strike. Such measurements come from core data, structural interpretations, and curvature, Formation Micro-Imager (FMI) logs,…
Distance Education
Krista Poscente
Distance education has a long history of providing educational opportunities for individuals who are unable or unwilling to attend traditional institutions. Our understanding of distance education is often defined by the associated mode of delivery. Correspondence is distance education delivered via the postal system. Internet course delivery has yielded new…
What Does Continuing Education Mean?
Penny Colton
The RECORDER asked me to write up some answers to the following questions: What is the role of Continuing Education in my organization (which I've taken to mean both CSEG and APEGGA). What does CE mean to me? How does one obtain CPD hours or continuing training? What is its…
The Space Environment and its impact on human activity
Panagiotis K. Marhavilas
The origins and fate of life on Earth are intimately connected to the way the Earth responds to the Sun’s variations. We live in the extended atmosphere of an active star where the solar activity and the space magnetic storms affect in various ways human life. Solar conditions are favorable…
The Calgary Mineral Exploration Group
Paul Hawkins, Henry Lyatsky
As the Alberta economy develops new industries and the required infrastructure, its need for diverse natural resources grows. Fortunately, there is much more to Alberta’s natural endowment than oil, gas and coal. We have long had, and have today, a vibrant mineral-exploration industry. Calgary has an annual mining conference, every…
Geoscience: Student-Industry Mixers and the SEG/EAGE Short Course 2004
Penny Colton
Dr. Paul Weimer of the U of Colorado presented the 2004 SEG/EAGE Distinguished Instructor Short Course (DISC), entitled Petroleum Systems of Deep-Water Settings, in Calgary on Wednesday, September 29, hosted by the CSEG - who honoured CSPG membership in determining an attendee's fee class. This course will be held at…
Oil Sands and Geophysics
Douglas Schmitt
It is well known that the production of conventional light from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin is declining rapidly. Heavy oils, here taken in the broad sense to include both heavy oil and bitumen, are replacing much of this lost production and their combined production already exceeds that of conventional…
