Articles
Exploration Challenges and Opportunities
Paul Durling and Tom Martel
Corridor Resources is a junior E&P company based in Halifax that focuses its exploration efforts in and around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Gulf occupies an area roughly one-half the size of Alberta and is surrounded by 5 Canadian provinces. Two sedimentary basins underlie the Gulf (Fig. 1): the…
3D ground penetrating radar surveys on a frozen river lagoon
Monica Moldoveanu-Constantinescu and Robert Stewart
This paper describes ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys that were conducted to characterize the ice and shallow subsurface of a frozen lagoon at Bowness Park, Calgary. We used Sensors and Software Inc.’s 250 MHz NOGGIN and Smart Cart system as well as a Pulse EKKO 4 system with 100 MHz antenna.…
The surface microseismic monitoring system on Turtle Mountain, Alberta
Robert Stewart, Henry Bland, Jeff Thurston, and Kevin Hall
Considerable attention has been directed toward seismic activity in the Crowsnest Pass area of southern Alberta on account of the calamitous Frank Slide in 1903 and numerous rockfalls on Turtle Mountain since then. The mountain is comprised of an unstable anticlinal structure (Jones, 1993; AGS, 2003) with a number of…
3C-3D seismic micro-survey at a Maya plaza ruin in Belize, Central America
Nicholas Kaprowski and Robert Stewart
Using seismic methods to image the very shallow subsurface is not yet common. The Applied Geophysics Group at the University of Calgary is involved in developing shallow seismic techniques and identifying their potential value in various disciplines, such as archaeology. To this end, we have conducted a number of seismic…
Aurora – The magnificent northern lights
Ioannis Daglis and Syun-Ichi Akasofu
The aurora is beautiful, spectacular, splendid, and appears quite frequently – almost nightly in the polar sky. Appearing in the form of majestic, colourful, irregular lights in the night sky, the aurora has a variety of shapes, colours, and structures, and continuously changes in time. Everybody who has seen the…
Making the Circle Stronger: A Geoscientist’s Perspective of the 2004 APEGGA Annual Conference Professional Development Seminars
Tom Sneddon
The following is a geoscientist’s summary of the multi-discipline professional development sessions offered at the APEGGA Annual Conference in Edmonton in April 2004.
... Proceedings of the 2004 CSEG Convention Workshops
Satinder Chopra / Helen Isaac / Jason Noble / Oliver Kuhn
Overview of the 2004 CSEG Convention Workshops
... Foamy oil and wormhole footprints in heavy oil cold production reservoirs
Sandy Chen, Larry Lines, Patrick Daley
Simultaneous extraction of oil and sand during the cold production of heavy oil generates high porosity channels termed “wormholes”. The development of wormholes causes reservoir pressure to fall below the bubble point, resulting in dissolved-gas coming out of solution to form foamy oil. Amplitude anomalies in the vicinity of the…
The Winds of Change: Anisotropic Rocks – Their Preferred Direction of Fluid Flow and Their Associated Seismic Signatures
Heloise B. Lynn
All of us interact in the context of our community. SEG and AAPG have played major positive roles in the community wherein I have worked for the last 30 years. These two societies invited me to speak upon a topic of my choice, for the benefit of our joint communities,…
A brief review of Remote Sensing
Compiled by Helen Isaac
Remote sensing is the science of acquiring, processing and interpreting data about the Earth's surface that is recorded by sensors on satellites or aircraft. Geoscience applications of remote sensing include the mapping of surficial deposits/bedrock, lithology, structures and structural trends, sedimentation and geohazards, sand and gravel exploration/ exploitation, mineral and…
Earthquakes of the Charlevoix Seismic Zone, Québec
Maurice Lamontagne, Mario Beauchemin, Thierry Toutin
Earthquakes represent a significant natural hazard. Canada is no exception; damaging earthquakes have occurred historically and the seismic hazard is non-negligible in many urban areas. Fortunately, mitigation measures, such as upgrading and enforcing building codes, make structures more resistant to earthquake strong ground motions. The seismic provisions of the National…
Where the Hell is that Well?
Stephen M. Thomas
Mixing of data referenced to NAD83 with data referenced to NAD27 may result in positional errors of up to 250 metres that could result in dry holes. NAD27 has served the oil and gas industry very well for the last 80 years and it is still the survey reference system…
Cretaceous (Brookian) Deep-Water Deposits of the Alaskan North Slope: Evidence from 3D Seismic Data
Henry Posamentier
The Brookian section (Middle Cretaceous) of the north slope of Alaska is characterized by high-relief clinoforms prograding towards the northeast into a deep foreland basin. The paleo-water depth ranges from sea level at the topset beds to approximately 800 m at the basin floor. The shelf-edge staging area, where the…
Visualizing the Future: The Upstream Industry Unleashed by Technology
Tony Wood
The upstream oil and gas industry has long advocated and depended upon advanced technologies as a major contributor to its success. Whether it be 3D seismic processing made possible by fast and reliable high performance computing and storage capabilities or the ubiquity of PCs, servers, PDAs and mobile communication devices.…
Extending the Collaborative Visualization Environment to Remote Operations Centers: Media Fusion, Sensor Networks, Real Time Data and Balanced Infrastructure
Bill Bartling, David Hughes and Dr. Eric Frost
Collaborative Visualization Environments (CVE’s) have been proven to be highly effective over the past 10 years, bringing decision teams together around their data to both save money and enhance results. This has been especially prevalent in the geophysical exploration and interactive drill-path planning work processes. These environments were first introduced…
Sun Technology Advancements Benefit Oil and Gas Exploration
Nick Weston
A streamlined exploration process is paramount to the success of any oil and gas company, and high performance compute infrastructure is the key to speeding up exploration. Fast CPUs, large memory footprints, speedy access to memory, precision graphics and technology to optimize compute resource utilization all contribute to faster compute…
Are You Managing Your IT Solutions or Is IT Still Managing You?
J. Douglas Uffen
Informational technology (IT) in the last couple of decades has considerably changed our lives and how we interact with the world. The IT revolution has forced each of us to learn new skills in the workplace as we attempt to keep abreast of technological innovations. The title of this paper…
SEGY Floating Point Confusion
Dennis Meisinger
Let us be straight with one another. Well, perhaps more to the point, let us be sinusoidal with one another. Communication is key in every industry. The words and images that are being used in this article are an attempt at modeling my thoughts in order to transmit them to…
Application of Multiple Regression and Artificial Neural Network Techniques to Predict Shear Wave Velocity from Wireline Log Data for a Carbonate Reservoir, South-West Iran
H. Eskandari, M.R. Rezaee, and M. Mohammadnia
Estimation of shear wave velocity (Vs) using log data is an important approach in the seismic exploration and characterization of a hydrocarbon reservoir. So far all the available empirical models for Vs prediction are mathematical models that incorporate only one or two petrophysical parameters and they lack the generalization capability.…
Multicomponent seismic applications in coalbed methane development
Sarah E. Trend and Don C. Lawton
Increasing interest and activity in coalbed methane production in Western Canada has led to an urgent need for effective and efficient technologies for coal evaluation. Surface seismic methods are effective in delineating lateral coal zone continuity and areal extent, and for mapping faults, channel-cuts and small-scale structures that may hinder…
