Tracing the Industry

…As I write this column, I am looking out the window at the snow and the temperature is dropping. My snow tires are on, so winter is finally here. It will be December when you read this column so I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays…

Malcolm Lansley

An Interview with Malcolm Lansley

…Malcolm, let’s begin by asking you about your educational background and your work experience. Okay, well basically I had decided at a very young age, about 13 years old, that I wanted to be a geophysicist. Well, that’s interesting. During my childhood I had a desire to travel. I think…

Guns, Vibes and Channels

R. Malcolm Lansley

…Abstract This talk will discuss the nature of recent changes in the seismic industry and the benefits that have resulted. Improvements have been made in recording technology and equipment and these have enabled newer and greatly improved methods of recording data. The increased power of computing systems has allowed efficient…

Hydraulic Fracture Height Growth

Shawn C. Maxwell

…Introduction Hydraulic fracture stimulations or ‘fracs’ are vital for economic production in low permeability tight gas and shale gas reservoirs, and the frac height is a key factor for engineers to optimize the hydraulic fracture treatment. As unconventional reservoir development has spread through North America and specifically to regions unaccustomed…

Hydraulic fracturing: Coulomb failure stress in fracture networks

Kris Vasudevan and David W. Eaton

…Summary In hydrocarbon-producing sedimentary basins, the crust can be modelled as a poroelastic medium. The stress state of a poroelastic medium, which entails both the shear and normal stress of the rock, is influenced by pore-fluid diffusion. Coulomb stress changes due to pore pressure changes in a poroelastic medium may…

An Introduction to Practical Modeling of Reservoir Geomechanics for Appraisal and Development

Vikram Sen and A. (Tony) Settari

…Introduction The inter-linking or coupling of geosciences with engineering in cross-disciplinary studies has become increasingly popular in recent years. In the context of the Canadian oil and gas industry, this particularly applies to two major areas: (i) hydraulic fracturing based stimulation of unconventional (i.e. tight) reservoirs or shales, and (ii)…

Doug Oldenburg

An Interview with Doug Oldenburg

…Tell us about your educational background. I received a B.Sc. Honours Physics from the University of Alberta. A 4th year course taught by Ernie Kanasewich got me into Geophysics. We worked through the text book by Grant and West. It was intriguing how basic physics could be used to investigate…

Presidential Column

…It’s almost Halloween, and that means CSEG election nominations time. By the time this column reaches press, the slate of candidates will have been finalized and the electoral process will have begun in earnest. One of my roles as CSEG President is to assist in the nomination process by actively…

Executive Message

…A year ago when we were preparing the budget for 2011 it appeared that the industry was on an upswing. Human nature dictates that we are always cautious when doing personal budgets, and I always struggled with that bias when preparing the CSEG budget. The CSEG has an extremely healthy…

CAGC Column

…The Economist in its October 22-28 2011 magazine has the cover commentary Rage against the machine subtitled Capitalism and its critics. It follows with another article in the magazine entitled Protest – Not quite together. The subtitle runs Protests are proliferating across the world. Their Aim is not obvious. Nor…

Through the Eyes of a Student

…Over the past couple of months, I have attended a few events hosted by the CAGC, and I thought I would give you a student’s perspective of these experiences. It was suggested to me by one of my mentors that I meet with Mike Doyle to discuss what the CAGC…

Tracing the Industry

…You probably noticed that Tracing the Industry was not in the October issue of the RECORDER. I was in the middle of moving, renovations and getting ready for a vacation. As always, everything that could go wrong did, and I did not have computer access in time to submit my…

Grapevine

…Happy November! If you see several of our CSEG gentlemen sprouting crazy moustaches this month, I would suspect that they are participating in the Movember charity drive to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues, specifically prostate cancer. Two geophysicists who will be definitely growing a “mo” are Shaun…

Presidential Column

…Trivia Question: What do the CSEG Doodlebug Golf Tournament, Playboy magazine, Chevy Corvettes, Saran Wrap, the Pembina Pool and Elvis Presley all have in common? I promised this month I would delve into the CSEG’s annual social events and in doing so, I discovered some fascinating tidbits. Our society is…

SEG Distinguished Lecture: Imaging the Earth’s near surface: The why and how of applied geophysics for the 21st century

Douglas W. Oldenburg

…The top few kilometers of the Earth’s surface are of extreme importance to our society. This near-surface region houses mineral and hydrocarbon wealth that are crucial for industrialized development, water needed for life, and it is an environment with which we must interact to build our infrastructure. To exploit these…

Executive Message

…Current Total membership lies at 2104 (up from last year). This is comprised of Active (1698), Student (289), Retired (74), Honorary (25), and Unemployed (18). While 1971 members reside in Canada, 133 are from outside. 49 companies have corporate memberships. Given those modest numbers, I am always amazed at what…

CAGC Column

…The Times They Are a-Changin' by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is one of Dylan's most famous; many felt that it captured the spirit of social and political upheaval that characterized the 1960s. Written in the mid 1960’s – fast-forward 45 years or so – we are there again. The global movements…

Through the Eyes of a Student

…Over the years I have worked a few different jobs, some good, some bad, but they all shared one common thread. They all came with their own bag of tricks. These skills are something that no classroom can prepare you for, and they are some of the most important. With…

Grapevine

…Welcome back Fall! I have to admit, I am definitely liking the energy levels around the oil patch these days… people seem to be working & playing hard. One group that deserves a mention for going above and beyond for their community are the 437 Nexen employees that shattered a…

Fault-Plane Solutions from Moment Tensor Inversion for Microseismic Events using Single-Well and Multi-Well Data

Jing Du, Ulrich Zimmer, and Norm Warpinski

…Summary Although microseismic monitoring of hydraulic fractures has primarily been concerned with the dimensions, complexity, and growth of the fractures or fracture systems, there is an ever-increasing desire to extract more information about hydraulic fracturing and/or natural fractures from microseismic data. Source-mechanism analysis, which is concerned with deducing details of…