Science Break: Concrete

…People love coining terms to categorize periods of human culture into distinct Ages. I suppose it’s an exercise in how future societies will view us. The industrial age, the computer age, the hydrocarbon age, the information age…even geologists have got into the game, with the term Anthropocene. I wonder if…

Tracing the Industry

…On the Move... Jason Noble is pleased to announce he has formed a new seismic processing company in Calgary. Headwaters Seismic Processing is a boutique full service processing center offering 2D and 3D prestack time migration, 2D prestack depth migration and full AVO compliance through 5D regularization and PSTM. By…

Practical insights and techniques in seismic velocity estimation

John T. Etgen

…The estimation of seismic wave speeds plays one of the most important and critical roles in seismic data processing. As we explore more complex and previously unexplorable provinces, as well as demanding ever-higher quality images from seismic reflection data everywhere, accurate velocity models are of paramount importance. I feel this…

Advanced Seismic Inversion for Engineering Applications in Unconventional Reservoirs

Colin Sayers

…Because of their low permeability, economic production from unconventional reservoirs requires increasing the surface area in contact with the reservoir via hydraulic fracturing. Important to the design of efficient hydraulic fractures is an understanding of pore pressure, the orientation and magnitude of principal stresses, the geomechanical properties of the rock,…

Introduction to September Focus: Prairie Provinces

Draga Talinga and Germán Rodríguez Pradilla

…Nothing has contributed more to the accelerated advancement of Canada over the past several decades, than the exploration and mining of primary resources. And beneath the rich soil of the Prairies Provinces lie some of the greatest natural resources of our country - vast mineral deposits and oil and gas…

Geoscience Across Canada – Resource Exploration in the Prairie Provinces

Brad Hayes

…The exploration history of the discovery of two deposits beneath the Phanerozoic cover of the Flin Flon – Snow Lake volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) Belt in Manitoba and Saskatchewan is presented. Due to a lack of outcrops of the host rocks, geophysical exploration techniques were key to the discoveries. Both…

Methods of fault detection with geophysical data and surface geology

Brian Wm Schulte PG, Dane Bridge, Henry Lyatsky

…Introduction Horizontal wells and fracking are commonly used to increase hydrocarbon production while at the same time lowering the costs. This practice is helped by pad drilling, where multiple lateral horizontal wells can be drilled from a single location (Figure 1), reducing land use and cutting the need to move…

Application of Full Zoeppritz AVO Inversion for Delineating Porous Sand Geobodies Over Aquistore Seismic Survey

Homayoun Gerami

…We used 3D seismic data from the Aquistore deep saline CO2 storage project survey, southwest of Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada, using seismic amplitude variation with offset (AVO) inversion and lithology prediction workflows to delineate the porous sand units across the survey. Throughout this work, we used both Aki-Richards three-term approximation to…

What is the value of a VSP and why it should be modeled?

Jason Schweigert and Brian Wm. Schulte

…Introduction In today’s era of tight commodity prices, there is a push to minimize the breakeven price (BEP) for resource plays and maximize their production. To lower BEP, exploration and production (E&P) companies have been drilling multiple horizontal wells off a single pad therefore reducing the environmental impact and minimizing…

Charles Ursenbach

An Interview with Charles Ursenbach

…Chuck, I am sure our readers would like to get to know you better, so tell us about yourself, i.e. your educational background and your work experience? My education and career have been a journey, whose various turns I did not foresee. I admire people with well-planned careers, but I…

Board Message: A New Status Quo?

…Happy almost end of summer.  Time to ramp up for fall and winter activities – or stay the course.  Hard to say what the future holds.  Your CSEG Executive continues to look for efficiencies, means of boosting revenue and improving the products and services available to our membership.  Communications has…

CAGC Column: Seismic Evolution

…CAGC is pleased to announce that it has taken over the administration of the Chainsaw Faller training program in the Oil & Gas sector from Energy Safety Canada, previously known as Enform and before that PITS. The CAGC and our members have been closely involved with the development of the…

Chief Editor’s Message

…History of the oil and gas industry in Alberta The first discovery of hydrocarbons in Western Canada was the discovery of natural gas in a water well. In 1883 the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was seeking water for the transcontinental railway locomotives and it began to drill a water well…

Science Break: Bacteriophages

…The threat of a modern-day plague is definitely real. Every day brings more news on super bugs, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the non-development of new antibiotics. And glimpses of what might be just around the corner, such as outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease on cruise ships, or hospital wings being shut down…

Gordon West

An Interview with Dr. Gordon West

…OK: Gordon, where did you grow up, and what attracted you to geophysics? GW: I was born in Toronto and am very much a hometown boy. I love to travel and see the rest of the world, but I'm quite attached to Toronto and Ontario. My father was an architect…

Introduction to June Focus: Central Canada

Oliver Kuhn and Jean Legault

…Mining and near surface applications dominate the exploration geophysics sector in Central Canada. In our search for articles, rather than just focusing in those two areas, we also looked for other geophysical applications that would provide readers a broader and more interesting range of topics. Therefore in addition to a…

Ambient noise surface wave tomography at the Marathon PGM-Cu deposit, Ontario, Canada

Dan Hollis, John Mcbride, Sophie Beaupretre, Aurélien Mordret, Florent Brenguier, Nicholas Arndt, Dave Good

…Abstract In this paper we report the results of tests of the ambient-noise surface wave seismic tomography method at Stillwater Canada Inc.’s Platinum Group Element-Copper (PGE-Cu) deposit at Marathon in Ontario. This survey demonstrated the potential of the technique to help determine the geological setting of the deposit and, in…

The Metal Earth project: Crustal scale reflection seismic study of the Archean Superior Province of Canada

Mostafa Naghizadeh

…Metal Earth is an applied research and development program led by Laurentian University with $104 million funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and federal/provincial/industry partners. Metal Earth aims to profoundly enhance our knowledge about the origin and evolution of base and precious metal deposits during Earth’s history. By…

The Industrial Wind Turbine Seismic Source

Michael West

…Introduction Despite their generally positive reputation as sources of clean, safe energy, Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs) do have their critics. For years, residents living in the vicinity of IWT clusters have reported a variety of physical ailments which they attribute to the sounds and vibrations emanating from wind turbines (Kelley,…

Pre-competitive geophysics in Ontario – attracting investment with data

Desmond R.B. Rainsford

…Abstract The Ontario Geological Survey (OGS), in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Canada, was one of the first jurisdictions to collect and distribute pre-competitive, regional-scale, geophysical data. Following the completion of province-wide coverage with low-resolution geophysical surveys, the Ontario Geological Survey is accumulating detailed data over much of the…