Presidential Column

It is hard to believe how quickly the summer has gone by. But upon reflection it is not hard to see why, there were numerous CSEG and geophysical events that occurred throughout the summer, plus family vacations and a few bar-b-ques. Starting off the summer was the first annual CSEG T-wave Golf Tourney that was successfully held at the Inglewood Golf and Curling Club at the end of June. This was followed by the classic Doodlebug golf tournament held in Jasper August 20th to 22nd. Thanks to all the volunteers who made both these events so successful. On the heels of the Doodlebug, the SEG held their Research Forum on “CO₂ Sequestration Geophysics” in Banff Aug 24 to 28th. With the kids going back to school my thoughts now turn to fall...

The CSEG elections are fast approaching. Nominations must be submitted by November 1st. The open positions are for the Assistant Director of Educational Services, Communications, Finance, Member services and Vice President. The Directors all serve a two year term, starting as the Assistant Director in the first year and then becoming Director in the second year. The Vice President becomes the President and then Past President serving for three years total. The organizational structure and roles of these positions are outlined on the CSEG website at: http://cseg.ca/members/cseg-executive

I encourage people to consider running for the executive. It is a chance to meet and work with many fine people within our profession. Currently, we have quite an active society providing both social and technical functions to about 2200 members. The long term health of our society rests upon the energy of our members. As the Western Canadian Basin becomes more development oriented our society will face challenges as the role of geophysics changes. If you know someone who has good ideas about how they would like our society to evolve, I suggest you nominate them for one of the positions listed above. To do this, the candidate must be an active member in good standing, be willing to run and have five signatures of members in good standing. For details about the roles and the nomination procedure please see the CSEG website: http://cseg.ca/members/cseg-bylaws

The second last week of August, I had the opportunity to attend and welcome the SEG Research Workshop “CO₂ Sequestration Geophysics” to Banff on behalf of the CSEG. The research workshop focused on the geophysical aspects of monitoring CO₂ sequestration. I found it quite interesting to learn about the number and speed with which projects are moving forward, especially since the inauguration of the Obama administration. World-wide, three gigatonnes of CO₂ must be sequestered a year. The average size of these projects is one megatonne per year, implying that several thousand of these sequestration projects must be in progress at any one time. In Alberta, the government has budgeted two billion dollars to be spent on 3 pilot projects. In addition, the U of C is planning a research and teaching facility at the Rothney Observatory close to Priddis. Various monitoring techniques including satellite remote sensing, gravity, EM, microseismic, and surface seismic were discussed at the conference. Of the various techniques shown, it seemed to me that 4D seismic has the greatest potential to accurately map the migration of small quantities of CO₂. With several thousand of these sites needed this could become an important business for our profession.

Another key emerging technology is microseismic. I would like to remind our members that the CSEG is sponsoring a Microseismic Workshop October 13-15th at Canada Olympic park. Registration is ongoing and details of the workshop may be found at the CSEG website.