CAGC Column

…By the time this column goes to print, the U.S. Midterm elections will have taken place. As part of this process on Nov. 2, California voters will be asked to approve Proposition 23, which would suspend implementation of the 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) until the state…

Tracing the Industry

…You will notice a new section “It’s a small world after all” in the column this month. Kelly and I recently experienced “a small world” incident in October. We went to Fairmount for a week of rest and relaxation. We were in Invermere and decided on the spur of the…

Grapevine

…Happy November… For those of you who attended the Challenge Bowl at the GeoCanada Convention this past May, you will be happy to hear that our winning CSEG team, consisting of Meriem Grifi and Andrew Brenders from the University of Western Ontario, performed extremely well at the competition down at…

John Fernando

An Interview with John Fernando

…John, tell us about your early education and your work experience. I arrived in Canada from Sri Lanka with my parents and my sister on January 2nd 1972, in the dead of winter. What a climate shock that was! When my dad, who came to Canada a year and a…

Refraction Statics: The Art and Science of Near-Surface Interpretation

Chuck Diggins

…Every step in refraction statics determination involves intrepretation. On acquisition, many decisions impact the quality of the refraction analysis: array lengths, group and shot intervals, furthest distance, wide vs narrow azimuth, source types, receiver types, etc. Each of these decisions should and probably rarely or never are considered from the…

Central Alberta Aggregate Study

B. Janet Morrissey

…Abstract An OhmMapper apparent resistivity survey was undertaken at a site in central Alberta to identify and delineate an aggregate deposit. The results show that the apparent resistivity method has defined the lateral and vertical extent of the main aggregate zone as well as several smaller high-resistivity regions on the…

Magnetic and Gravity Methods in Mineral Exploration: the Value of Well-Rounded Geophysical Skills

Henry Lyatsky

…The word “geophysics” in oil exploration is often used synonymously with “seismic”, overlooking many other fruitful techniques. In mineral exploration and engineering projects, applicability of seismic imaging is often limited and other geophysical methods take the front seat. Gravity and magnetic methods, which are discussed in this article, are extremely…

Beyond Isotropy – Part II: Physical Models in LMR Space

Marco Perez

…The following is the second part of the article “Beyond Anisotropy – Part 1: A Prestack Perspective” (RECORDER, 35-7). This section provides an in depth analysis of the seismic reflection of anisotropic media, specifically using the Lambda-Mu-Rho (LMR) crossplot. In Part 1, anisotropic reflections were analyzed from the perspective of…

A Geoscientist in Antarctica: Following in Shackleton’s footsteps 100 years later…

Susan R. Eaton

…I began by assembling the basics for my field trip to Antarctica and South Georgia: surface geology maps, topographic maps, hiking boots, wool socks, a back pack and two digital cameras. My gear list soon ballooned to include a hydrophone, an Iridium satellite phone, a lap top computer, an Arctic-rated…

Norm Cooper

An Interview with Norm Cooper

…Please tell us briefly about your early education? My father worked for CN Telecommunications and every time he got promoted, we had to move to the city where his new position was available. As a result, we moved a lot throughout major centers in Western Canada. My schooling took place…

Presidential Column

…As I mentioned last month, the CSEG Elections will take place in December and nominations close soon. All the Assistant Director positions and the Vice President’s role are up for grabs. If you have a desire to improve the image or the technical or social lives of Canada’s geophysicists, running…

CAGC Column

…How the world has changed in a year and especially here in Alberta. The price of natural gas has remained soft whereas the price of oil has strengthened comparatively. It was first reflected in the media in the fall of 2009 with the reporting of imminent surpassing by Oil Royalty…

CSEG Foundation Outreach

…CSEG-F Outreach Ambassador Program CSEG Foundation Outreach has been implementing plans to coordinate events outside Calgary to promote Geophysics to students, connect to universities with Geophysics programs and promote the CSEG across Canada. The CSEG plans to accomplish these tasks through the Ambassador program. The Ambassador program has four main…

Tracing the Industry

…I had a conversation earlier today with a gentleman in Denver. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out he has been reading the RECORDER and this column for years. It is very gratifying to know that the RECORDER has such a wide reach. I have worked on many committees…

Grapevine

…Happy October… Fall has arrived, the leaves are changing colour and fluttering down… into the myriad of technicolour election signs that are spreading like weeds throughout Calgary. Somehow, it doesn’t seem quite as pretty, and as easy to scrunch the leaves as you walk… but that’s democracy in action. Get…

15 years of passive seismic monitoring at Cold Lake, Alberta

Richard J. Smith

…Summary The first test of passive seismic technology at Imperial Oil’s heavy oil operation in Cold Lake, Alberta was conducted in 1995. Since 1998 passive seismic monitoring has been integrated into the commercial operations. There are currently ~100 dedicated monitoring wells with 5, 8, 10 or 12 tri-axial geophones deployed…

Natural Fractures from the Perspective of Diagenesis

S.E. Laubach, J.E. Olson, P. Eichhubl, S. Fomel, and R.A. Marrett

…Summary Information about chemical changes that occur in rocks during burial—diagenesis—can help improve geologic fracture characterization and prediction by accounting for rock mechanical property changes through time and by providing evidence for how fractures grow and become sealed. Diagenesis information can also be a key ingredient in better geophysical interpretation…

Comparison between faults extracted from seismic and Elastic Dislocation Modelling

Thibaut Cheret, Jonathan Long, and Jonathan Turner

…Introduction Most fault enhancement techniques rely on enhancing the discontinuities within the seismic signal. However, there is a large variety of phenomena that cause discontinuities in the seismic signal. Furthermore, fault heaves are lower than the Fresnel zone width thus not fully resolvable and as a result, faults are often…

Beyond Isotropy – Part I: A Prestack Perspective

Marco Perez

…The seismic response is composed of two parts: the traveltime of a signal from the surface to and from a reflector and the amplitude of the reflection. Of interest here is the amplitude of the reflection, which is primarily a function of material properties at a given geological interface; specifically…

Time Lapse Interpretation of Cold Heavy Oil Production

Ken Hedlin, Arthur Chan and Bob Godfrey

…Introduction A number of papers have been published that show seismic amplitude anomalies in CHOPS (Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand) fields correlated with production (e.g. Hedlin & Chan, 2009; Chen et al, 2004 and Mayo, 1996). Modeling and 2D seismic experiments conducted in 2002 by Husky Energy suggested that…