Grapevine

…Registration Begins for Mines and Minerals Symposium The Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines is now accepting registrations for its 18th Annual Mines and Minerals Symposium, to be held December 11 and 12 in the Macdonald Block, 900 Bay St., Queen's Park, Toronto. The symposium opens Monday, December 11…

Depth Imaging of Seismic Data from Structurally Complex Areas

Larry Lines, Wen-ling Wu, Han-Xing Lu, Andrew Burton, and Jinming Zhu

…Recent geophysical research has made widespread use of depth migration and velocity analysis in our efforts to improve seismic images in structurally complex areas. Such structural exploration problems include the imaging of salt intrusions and faulted structures from offshore Newfoundland, and the delineation of thrust faulted structures from the Alberta…

From Horses to Helicopters: Bill Sydorko's 45-year Career in Seismic Field Work Mirrors an Industry's Coming-of-age

Samantha-jane Mugridge

…Bill Sydorko has progressed from working on geophysical crews of four or five men in 1950 to supervising crews of up to 30 men during the 1980s and 90s. Where 16 or 24 traces per seismic record were once standard, now he routinely deals with a minimum of 144 per…

Tracing the Industry

…Exploration Innovations is pleased to announce that David Secord and David Garner have joined the company. David Secord is Manager of Interpretation Services bringing over 16 years industry experience. David Gamer brings over 12 years industry experience and will provide computer-aided geostatistical and geological consulting. Friends and colleagues can contact…

The Natural View: The End of Nature?

…"Global warming is unlikely to be entirely due to natural causes and that a pattern of climatic response to human activities is identifiable in the climatological record". This statement issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations Panel to the Climate Change Convention, may finally end a…

Grapevine

…LCT to Acquire Gravity on PGS Ramform Explorer's First Survey LCT will be acquiring the industry's first gravity survey onboard PGS's new seismic vessel, the M/V Ramform Explorer for Amoco UK Exploration Company. The survey will be performed with one of LCT's enhanced LaCoste & Romberg SAGE gravity meters. LCT…

3-D Prestack Time Migration of Canadian Plains Data: When and Why It is Needed

Mike Perz and Peter Cary

…Today's generation of superscalar workstations and high performance supercomputers allows full prestack time migration of 3-D data volumes within a time frame that is manageable from the explorationist's viewpoint. Most geophysicists are aware that performing prestack time migration on structured data sets offers certain advantages, particularly from the viewpoint of…

Applied AVO Analysis: Use and Abuse of Amplitude Variation with Offset

John P. Castagna

…The great promise of amplitude-versus-offset (AVO) analysis lies in the dependence of the offset-dependent-reflectivity of reflected compressional waves on the elastic properties of the subsurface. As different lithologies may exhibit distinct Poisson's ratios, and gas bearing strata usually exhibit anomalously low Poisson's ratios, AVO has been recognized as a potential…

Grapevine

…SIRIUS Software Martens Consulting and SolutionWare Inc. have recently released SIRUS, a new windows-based geophysical records management software package to help exploration staff manage both physical data and related information. SIRUS features an easy-to-use graphical interface and open design, to run as either a networked or stand-alone application. Second International…

The Natural View

…Many of us think of Canada's national parks as sanctuaries for wildlife and places providing an opportunity to "get away from it all and renew ties with nature". Few realize our national parks may be in trouble and by the next century our national heritage may be reduced to a…

Tracing the Industry

…Flo Reynolds has joined Petrel Robertson Ltd, and will be responsible for the domestic seismic. Flo can be reached at 250-8299. Brian Henry has joined Chapman Petroleum Engineering where he will be conducting 3D-3C surveys for reservoir simulation. Brian can be reached at 266-4141. Francis Lee, formerly of Serenpet Inc.,…

Why Perform 3-D Prestack Time migration on the Prairies?

Mike Perz

…Hardware platforms have now achieved a level of sophistication which permits the use of full 3-D prestack time migration as a production-style processing tool. While most geophysicists are aware that performing 3-D prestack time migration on structured data sets offers certain advantages, particularly from the viewpoint of velocity analysis, many…

Interpretation of Aeromagnetic Data

Erwin Ebner, John Peirce and Nathalie Marchand

…Introduction The previous three articles of this series on Potential Field (PF) Geophysics dealt with recent technical improvements in magnetics and gravity instrumentation as well as with critical components concerning data acquisition and PF project management. This article focuses on processing and interpretation of aeromagnetic data. Key aspects of each…

The CSEG Internet Services

Howard G. Hepburn

…The CSEG is pleased to announce that Email and other services are now available to the membership on the Internet. The Email address for the CSEG office is: cseg@cadvision.com. The CSEG also maintains a home page through the University of Calgary. The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is: http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/CSEG. Check it…

Grapevine

…Motorola Computer Group Announces a New Value-Added Reseller Agreement has Been Signed with Pulsonic Computer Systems The Motorola Computer Group (MCG) recently announced that an agreement has been signed with Pulsonic Computer Systems of Calgary, Alberta. The agreement includes resale of Motorola's new PowerStack family of client/server and multi-user computer…

The Natural View

…This month's column is titled Rigs, Roads and Rainforest and discusses the environmental impacts of seismic exploration in the Amazonian basin of Ecuador. Dropping out of the clouds on the eastern side of the Andean cordillera past the looming volcanic shape of Cayambe, the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador, or what…

Tracing the Industry

…Hello, my name is Gord Breckenridge. I am a Geophysical Broker with Kary Data Consultants Ltd. I will be taking over this column from Todd O'Brien. Congrats Todd on a job well done. I trust all had a good summer. Now for some news. Doug Uffen, formerly of Home Oil,…

Project Planning and Management for Magnetic Gravity Surveys

Erwin Ebner

…Introduction The first two articles of this series on potential field (PF) geophysics dealt with recent technological improvements in gravity and magnetics survey systems. This article addresses issues from a project management perspective where questions such as Why are we doing this? What are we going to get out of…

Using Geostatistics to Aid in Reservoir Characterization

Sheldon B. Gorell

…Proper characterization of reservoir heterogeneities is a well recognized requirement to predict reservoir performance accurately. Given the large investment requirements, long development schedules, and the often uncertain economic outlook, sound decision making requires reasonable estimates of how much, and when, oil will be produced. It is no longer sufficient to…

The Natural View

…How do we go about evaluating the effects of development on the environment? Do we only consider the impacts a single project may have, or should we also consider the combined effects of all other developments? We only have to look around us and see the cumulative effects humans are…