From September 22 – 26, 2014, the CSEG and EAGE hosted the First CSEG – EAGE Joint Workshop, with the theme The Conventional Future: Complex Reservoir Challenges in Frontier Land Basins. The idea was to discuss the fundamental issues with land seismic data in conventional exploration. We chose The Banff Centre for a venue, for both its inspirational setting, plus the opportunity to foster discussion, cloistered off in a mountain retreat.
The workshop covered topics on seismic acquisition, processing, and interpretation, with one day dedicated to each of these three phases of seismic exploration. Data examples varied widely, covering a wide variety of basins and analogues. The technical committee decided on 45-minute time slots for each presentation, allocating 25 – 30 minutes for the presentation and the remaining 15 – 20 minutes for questions and discussion. The original plan was to have additional sessions for open discussion in the morning or afternoon, but the committee received so many strong submissions, even with a few rejections for relevance to the theme, we needed to fill the morning discussion sessions each day with and additional talk.
The attendees included 72 delegates from 12 countries as far away as United Arab Emirates and New Zealand. There was no problem filling the discussion times. On the contrary: the session chairs needed to cut off discussions or delay topics until the end-of-day open session in order to keep loosely on who designed the schedule, gave generous 45-minute coffee breaks during the day, to facilitate personal discussions and follow-up among delegates. These breaks also gave the session chairs an opportunity to get back on schedule after a particularly hearty discussion.
I talked with a few colleagues interested in compiling a summary of the technical content of the workshop for future issues of the RECORDER and First Break. We will work on this collaborative effort and share the resulting summary in a future issue.
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