Grapevine

…Happy New Year! Welcome to 2011! I trust that everyone had a successful holiday season, and is now ready to buckle back down… SURE you are… Remember to renew your CSEG membership! Every membership helps keep the CSEG operating, and also gives you access to the online Recorder three months…

Rumblings from the Laboratory: Past, Present, and Future

Carl Sondergeld

…Abstract The complexity of rocks in nature, and its resultant imprint on rock properties, makes empirical laboratory studies necessary and relevant. Numerous efforts are underway in academia and industry to try and use theoretical models to predict petrophysical and seismic rock properties from microscale images of rocks. However, modeling can…

David D’Amico

An Interview with David D’Amico

…David, lets begin by asking you about your educational background and your employment experience. Sure. My education is a little bit different than most because I graduated from Honours Physics and then did a Masters in Medical Physics; subsequent to that I joined the Oil & Gas Industry with Amoco…

Presidential Column

…CSEG Elections: Time for you to vote! The Elections for CSEG Directors are now taking place. The elections run all through December and close on January 15th. It takes a long time to hold the elections due to our use of mail-in ballots. This year there are nine candidates running…

Executive Message

…Happy December Everyone! I sit here writing the December CSEG Executive message, and am reflecting on the long-range planning (LRP) meeting that happened back in early June. John Townsley and Jon Downton decided that it was time for the CSEG Executive, staff and Standing Committee Chairs to re-examine our common…

CAGC Column

…Time to write about something entirely different. As we, all of humankind, struggle with things such as climate change it brings about an interesting discussion on the concept of nogrowth economies. As we all share the same biosphere it would mean balancing wealth as a starting point across the globe.…

CSEG Foundation Outreach

…Seismic in Motion for Students 2010 CSEG-F Outreach was again pleased to be able to bring students from three Calgary high schools to Seismic in Motion for Students (SIMfS), which was held near Waiparous in early October. The CAGC’s annual Seismic in Motion allows companies to display and explain seismic…

Tracing the Industry

…Merry Christmas everyone! As 2010 draws to a close I thought I would share a great discovery that Kelly and I made recently on a trip to Edmonton. We found a great restaurant – “A Taste of Ukraine”, downtown on Jasper Avenue. Although I don’t have a Ukrainian background, you…

Grapevine

…Happy December… T’is the season for SNOW, SNOW and more SNOW! I know that many of us will be attending the holiday parties that happen in November and December, so please make sure you play safe and keep your friends and colleagues safe. (Personally, I would prefer to play safe…

Thomas Bayes versus the wedge model

Jason M. McCrank, Gary F. Margrave and Don C. Lawton

…Abstract This paper demonstrates the use of the Bayesian inference to estimate model parameters in a synthetic example. The demonstration data are a set of zero-offset seismograms synthesized from a variation on the wedge model that thins in a general trend but with thickness that varies randomly about that trend.…

SAGD Well Planning Using Stochastic Seismic Inversion

Franck Delbecq and Rémi Moyen

…Abstract The complexity of heavy oil geology in SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) projects, especially in the presence of thin shale barriers that are beyond the resolution of traditional deterministic seismic inversion, makes the integration of seismic data with well data challenging. Stochastic inversion represents an improvement over deterministic inversion…

The Contribution of HRAM Data to Exploration in Canada: An Overview

Zeev Berger, Martin Mushayandebvu and Michelle Boast

…Introduction High resolution Magnetic (HRAM) data has been flown over most of the active sedimentary basins of the world. These data has been widely used for exploration and exploitation of both frontier and mature basins. The objective of this paper is to show case studies where HRAM data interpretation has…

It’s the Fluids that Count

Mike Batzle

…Fluid Properties and Their Geophysical Signature Locating and identifying pore fluids is usually the ultimate goal of any geophysical activity. This not only involves oil and gas recovery, but also assessing ground water resources and tracking pollution plumes. As we strive to make geophysical methods, particularly seismic results, more quantitative,…

Depth Conversion and Seismic Lithology Inversion of a McMurray Oil Sands Reservoir

Rainer Tonn

…Summary The Lower Cretaceous McMurray Formation in NE Alberta is a prolific oil sands reservoir. In Statoil Canada Ltd. Leismer leases, about 100 km south of Fort McMurray, the bitumen saturated reservoir lies at a depth of approximately 450 m with SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) being the optimal method…

Seismic Wave Phenomena and Implications for Accuracy of Microseismic Results

B. Fuller, L. Engelbrecht, R. Van Dok, M. Sterling, M. Kniffin, and L. Walter

…Introduction A primary goal of microseismic surveys is to locate the origination point of seismic events that occur in response to hydraulic fracture stimulation in a reservoir. Accurately locating the origin point of seismic events relies upon a complete understanding of wavefield propagation phenomena that occur in the environment of…

The more we listen the more we see: Microseismic monitoring of induced seismicity is coming of age

Juan M. Reyes-Montes, Will S. Pettitt and R. Paul Young

…Maximizing information from microseismic monitoring The growing demand of energy and resources from society has moved the energy industry to maximize the productivity of reservoirs and search into the exploitation of new resources in increasingly challenging environments. Technologies such as Enhanced Oil Recovery and Engineered Geothermal Systems have become normal…

Microseismic Moment Tensors: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

David W. Eaton and Farshid Forouhideh

…Summary Seismic moment tensors provide a general mathematical representation of point sources that can be used to distinguish between various microseismic source types. We use synthetic tests with borehole receiver arrays to determine the geometrical conditions necessary to estimate reliably the six independent components of a full moment tensor by…

How much experience is enough?

Tom Sneddon

…Maybe it’s just me, but every day when I arrive at the jobsite I feel like this day’s challenges are different from anything I’ve done before. I think that maybe someone more experienced than me should be called in for advice on whatever topic needs to be tackled. This has…

Presidential Column

…This month’s column concerns my recent trip to the SEG convention in Denver. For me, 2010 was another interesting trip to the big show, this year the theme was “Imaging Our Future”. Personally, my quest to image my own future involved attending talks focused on unconventional plays and thankfully I…

Executive Message

…When I agreed to let my name stand for the position of financial director of the CSEG I had some preconceived ideas about what that job would entail. For the most part there weren’t any surprises, and I had lots of help along the way from Jim Racette, and Brock…