Executive Message

…For the past year I have been your volunteer Assistant Director of Educational Services for the CSEG, under the tutelage of Bill Nickerson, the present Director. In March I will be taking over as Director, and will be welcoming Jennifer Leslie-Panek as Assistant Director. I look forward to working with…

CAGC Column

…As I research through my paper files I can track the issue of non-exclusive (spec) data release in the Canadian East Coast area back some 20 or more years. This has been a contentious issue for our industry. When it was originally dealt with in the 1980’s Industry submitted using…

Science Break: Disfluencies and Discourse Markers

…Overview Leading edge research by psycholinguists suggests that words and sounds generally considered inappropriate to speech (um, ah, like, you know, etc.) are in fact useful and facilitate effective communication in many instances. It should be noted that all experts do not accept these findings. These words and sounds are…

Tracing the Industry

…IN MEMORIUM... Last month Bill Quirk was kind enough to share his story of how he got involved in the seismic industry. On March 12, 2008 I received the message below from Bill. On behalf of the RECORDER, I would like to extend our sincerest sympathies. CS Barbara Jean Quirk,…

Grapevine

…CSEG Outreach Committee “100 jobs for 100 Students” The CSEG Outreach committee has recently joined the CSPG Outreach committee in “The 100 Student Jobs Initiative”. With the rapidly aging Geophysical and Geological workforce in the petroleum industry, the CSEG and the CSPG need to be proactive in getting young blood…

What Else Can the Seismic Waveform Tell Us?

Gerhard Pratt

…Traditional seismic imaging as widely practiced in the oil and gas industry, conceptually treats the seismic velocity model as if it were a separate entity from the seismic reflectivity image. A whole industry has been constructed around this separation, and for good cause: the velocity model is a very smooth,…

Seismically Guided Fracture Characterization

Robert Godfrey and Ran Bachrach

…Introduction In the future, there will be greater dependency on producing oil and gas from fractured reservoirs. Characterization and forecasting in fractured reservoirs are two of the most challenging topics in the oil and gas industry. Managing such reservoirs requires construction of representative reservoir models that can handle both fracture…

Fracture Detection Using 3D Seismic Azimuthal AVO

David Gray

…Abstract Azimuthal Amplitude Versus Offset is a new seismic method that is gaining popularity amongst those investigating fractured reservoirs. It is also known as AVAZ for Amplitude Versus Angle and aZimuth, AVOA for Amplitude Versus Offset and Azimuth and AzAVO. This paper will use the term AVAZ. The AVAZ method…

AVO projected pilot trace for dynamic trim statics

Ye Zheng, Mike Perz and Juefu Wang

…Abstract P-wave fracture analysis provides a means to extract information about fracture density and orientation from a target reservoir. While successful application of any fracture analysis method requires that the technique be based on a sound theoretical framework, it turns out that careful handling of certain practical issues is also…

Larry Lines

An Interview with Larry Lines

…Larry, let’s begin by asking you about your educational background and your work experience. I received my schooling in Athabasca Alberta, and went to University of Alberta for my Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Physics and Geophysics and then went to UBC for my Ph.D. in Geophysics. My work experience…

Presidential Column

…Something we do right “Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.” P.J. O’Rourke (American Humorist) I was looking for a quote drawn from Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me…

Executive Message

…SEG General Assembly (January 2008) With the SEG expanding at a phenomenal rate worldwide, new challenges arise in offering services to some 30,000 members, with more than half of them living outside the U.S.A. Another factor that the SEG executives are looking at is the fact that more than half…

CAGC Column

…For operations here in Alberta our members face an uphill climb as far as dealing with an ever-expanding Aboriginal Consultation mandate. We wrote the following letter to the then Ministers of (former) Aboriginal Affairs, SRD and Energy. The issue hits us at a time when everyone is concentrating on OilSands…

Science Break: Parasitoids

…There is a subtle, but morbidly fascinating distinction between a parasite and a parasitoid. The latter always kills its host while the former usually does not. Some 10% of insects are parasitoid, perhaps even more, predominantly wasps and flies. I first became aware of parasitoids when I saw a wasp,…

Tracing the Industry

…ON THE MOVE... Dave Feuchtwanger is pleased to announce that he has joined First Calgary Petroleums as a staff geophysicist. He can be reached at dfeuchtwanger@fcpl.ca. Deric Cameron of Petro-Canada, would like his friends and colleagues’ to know that he has accepted a job transfer out to St. John’s, NL…

Grapevine

…2009 CSEG Family Ski Spree Thanks to everyone who participated in the 2008 CSEG Family Ski Spree! We are already looking ahead to the 2009 event and the committee has a few important announcements to make. First, we are blessed by having phenomenal interest in our event, but we are…

The role of amplitude and phase in processing and inversion

Tadeusz Ulrych

…The object of seismic exploration is encoded in the data that are acquired on or near the surface of the earth. The goal of decoding these data is, essentially, to find out where and what this object is. Although we record our information in space and time, we always, at…

Technological Change – The Great Enabler of Exploration

Andrew Morrant

…One of the more notable trends in computing over the past few decades has been the evolution of technology, as it becomes exponentially more powerful while simultaneously shrinking in size and cost. New innovation has created unparalleled system efficiencies that reduce total cost of ownership. Accordingly, lower-cost IT brings vast…

Isilon Clustered Storage: Speeding Data Acquisition and Analysis for Oil and Gas Companies

No Author Attributed

…Anyone close to the seismic industry is aware of the huge volumes of data now routinely recorded, manipulated and stored. Many companies now specialize in advanced data storage technologies, offering unprecedented levels of storage capacity combined with usability. The following promotional article highlights one such company’s offerings. Upstream oil and…

Seismic Artifacts – a case study

Niranjan Nanda, Ram Singh and Satinder Chopra

…Summary Two structures G and H in an Indian offshore basin were test drilled for Eocene prospects. The G-1 well turned out to be dry, but the H-1 well encountered a thick column of oil in Eocene limestone reservoirs. Following the discovery, a review interpretation of seismic data for detailed…