How Widespread is Human-Induced Seismicity in the United States & Canada?

Mirko van der Baan

…There has been significant public and scientific interest in the observation of changed seismicity rates in North America since 2008, possibly due to human activities. We find that the seismicity rate in Oklahoma between 2008 and 2016 is strongly correlated to increased hydrocarbon production. The possibility of systematic correlations between…

Introduction to March Focus: Salt and Subsalt Imaging in the Gulf of Mexico

Quincy Zhang

…Subsalt imaging is one of the most critical technologies driving exploration to farther and deeper frontier areas in the Gulf of Mexico. For almost every project about subsalt imaging in the Gulf of Mexico, the three most important issues always are: How to improve the salt model? In other words,…

Salt Modeling Challenges and Strategies in the Mississippi Canyon, Gulf of Mexico

Quincy Zhang, Cristina Reta-Tang and Gary Rodriguez

…In the Mississippi Canyon a unique characteristic of salt geometries are their stacking hourglass shapes (Figure 1) – autochthonous Louann salt forms the lower part, allochthonous Mesozoic salt forms the middle part, and a Cenozoic salt canopy forms the shallow part. Due to this unique characteristic and the numerous overhangs…

Enhancing Salt and Subsalt Imaging in Deep Water, Gulf of Mexico, with Common Offset RTM Gathers

Jianshun Sheng, Seung Yoo, Cristina Reta-Tang and Gary Rodriguez

…We focus on extracting new value from previously acquired orthogonal WAZ surveys in the Mississippi Canyon area where some of the largest and still active deep water discoveries reside. Some analyses estimate that many large subsalt/presalt fields can still be discovered. In this study, the subsalt images which are critical…

Post-migration Coherent Noise Removal by Dip Decomposition to Enhance Subsalt Imaging in the Gulf of Mexico

Hongyan Li, Peter Winther, Carlos Espinoza, George Zhao, and Neeraj Duhoon

…In the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), with complex salt geometry, it is not unusual to see coherent noise in subsalt imaging. Such noise is detrimental to subsalt exploration and appraisal as it often leads to incorrect interpretations. The coherent noise is related to converted waves, intra-salt multiples, residual free-surface multiples,…

Enhancement of Seismic Monitoring in Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

Enrico Caffagni and Götz Bokelmann

…The oil and gas industry is currently undergoing an extended period of instability. Technology can be leveraged to improve these difficult circumstances. The challenge is to develop ground-breaking technologies that help manage new projects more efficiently. At the same time, there is a tremendous need for technology to ensure a…

Board of Directors’ Message

…In December 2016, I wrote an article about the CSEG Strategy Plan and this article could be considered Part 2: The present and the future of the CSEG. Our society, science and the petroleum industry here in Calgary are still operating in challenging market conditions. As we continue to see,…

CAGC Column

…100 years ago in October and November of 1917, four divisions of the Canadian Corps took turns assaulting Passchendaele ridge in Belgium during WW1. After separate attacks, they succeeded in capturing it and the ruins of Passchendaele village from exhausted German defenders. The battle that had dragged on for months…

Tracing the Industry

…On the Move... Paul Anderson has started with Oxy in Houston as a Geophysical Advisor. He can be reached at Paul_Anderson@oxy.com. Jessa Lee would like to inform her friends and colleagues that she has accepted a position as geophysicist with Paramount Resources. New email address is jessa.lee@paramountres.com. Pavlo Cholach would…

A Glimpse into the World of Seismic Attributes

Rainer Tonn

…Wednesday, February 21, 2018 • 11:30 AM Calgary Petroleum Club, Devonian Room (+15 Level), 319 – 5 Ave SW The Flemish Pass, offshore east coast Canada, has been an area of increased exploration activity since the discovery of Bay du Nord in 2013. The Flemish Pass is one of the…

Why We Should Perform PSDM and Calculate Seismic Attributes in the Depth Domain, Examples from the Woodford Formation

Marianne Rauch-Davies

…Wednesday, March 28, 2018 • 11:30 AM Calgary Petroleum Club, Devonian Room (+15 Level), 319 – 5 Ave SW We are commonly challenged to generate a drill plan in depth from time migrated seismic. In order to meet the needs of interpreters and drillers, PSTM volumes are frequently converted to…

Introduction to January Focus: Emerging Technologies: Machine Learning

Hoda Rashedi

…Surprisingly, the first time I was exposed to the basic concept of Machine Learning was at one of my undergraduate course called, “Philosophy of mind”. That was the first time, I was learning about how our brain functioning and how it could be biased. The year after, I took General…

A Gentle Introduction to Machine Learning

Mark Dahl

…Machine learning has generated a lot of excitement in recent years. It is only a matter of time before machine learning becomes commonplace in geoscience. There are many reasons for this that I could argue, but two come immediately to mind: machine learning has enjoyed incredible success in similar data-rich…

Machine Learning in Geoscience V: Introduction to Classification with SVMs

Matteo Niccoli

…This is the fifth in my series [1] of Machine Learning tutorials with a focus on geoscience problems. I intend to provide readers with an intuitive understanding of how Support Vector Machines (SVMs) work and how they are used to solve classification problems. I will utilize Scikit-learn [2], a Python…

Geochemical Facies Analysis Using Unsupervised Machine Learning

Brendon Hall

…This tutorial will demonstrate step-by-step how to build a practical geoscience machine learning workflow using Python and scikit-learn. The practice of extracting insights from large datasets has certainly caught mainstream attention in recent years. Software packages are emerging with multivariate statistics and machine learning algorithms built in to workflows. As…

Denoising Seismic Records with Image Translation Networks

Graham Ganssle

…Denoising data is the essence of discovery. Raw seismic data are a jumbled collection of bits bearing little resemblance to geology. All of the steps in the seismic data processing workflow, including deconvolution, migration, and stacking are noise reduction techniques designed by geophysicists to highlight a certain type of signal…

Properties of Propagating Wavelets with Severe Short-Period Internal Multiples

Fred Hilterman and Leila NAILI DOUAOUDA

…Seismic waves propagating through cyclical thin beds, which have a large acoustic impedance (AI) contrast to the surrounding sedimentary sequence, have distinct wavelet signatures. At depth, the wavelets have a low-frequency Gaussian-shaped signal followed by high-frequency noise coda. These complex wavelets often yield seismic with discontinuous primary reflections that have…

Forecasting bitumen state and production from 3C-4D seismic

David Gray and Dragana Todorovic-Marinic

…Assessing the liquid state of bitumen and its production is now possible from 4D seismic. From conventional 4D seismic data, steam chamber volume can be determined. From 3C-4D (3-component, 4-dimensional) PS (P-wave down, converted S-wave up) seismic data, the liquid state of the bitumen, immediately produceable bitumen, and future produceable…

Introduction to December Focus: Developments in Groundwater Geophysics

Melvyn Best

…Issues related to groundwater continue to grow in importance throughout the world, and geoscience techniques to deal with these issues are developing rapidly. Methods are needed to map the extent and quality of groundwater resources, water depletion and pollution, and subsurface flow related to engineering projects such as dams. Increasingly,…

Interpreted Water Quality Calculated from Borehole Resistivity Measurements in the Gulf Coast Aquifer, Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas, U.S.A.

John Meyer and Andrea Croskrey

…Texas has significant brackish groundwater resources estimated at over 2.7 billion acre-feet within 26 of the 30 designated major and minor aquifers. Brackish groundwater ranges from 1,000 to 10,000 milligrams per liter total dissolved solids (TDS) concentration, which includes the slightly saline and moderately saline zones (Table 1). The Texas…