Full-Waveform Inversion: Challenges, Opportunities and Impact

Dimitri Bevc

…There has been a great deal of industry activity and interest in full-waveform inversion (FWI) because of its potential to generate accurate high-resolution velocity models. Theoretically, the method has great promise, and compute power seems to be adequate to bring this promise to bear on practical business problems. The promise…

Introduction to June Focus: Unconventional Resources

Marco Perez

…Within the unconventional era of hydrocarbon exploitation, a geophysicist is asked the “question” of how to high-grade drilling locations for optimal and efficient reservoir development. He, or she, is asked to interpret subtle changes in elastic property estimated from surface measurements, on rock thousands of meters beneath the earth’s surface.…

Interpreting AVOAz using limaçons

Benjamin Roure

…Limaçon is a French word meaning snail (from the Latin word limax). In the real world, limaçons have a wide range of applications from culinary (a delicacy in some countries) to cosmetics (their slime is used for human skincare). In the mathematical world, limaçons (also known as Pascal’s limaçons after…

Short note: Estimation of anisotropic minimum horizontal closure stress

Bill Goodway

…The following derivations and equations describe anisotropic, “Transversely Isotropic” (VTI and HTI) Poisson’s ratios to obtain realistic in-situ estimates of Minimum Horizontal Closure Stress and its relation to Thomsen’s δ, and Sayers’ K0 and χ terms (Thomsen 1986; Sayers 1995, 2010). VTI anisotropy In the past seismic imaging and AVO…

Shear wave anisotropy estimates via azimuthal amplitude-variation-with-offset inversion

David Cho, David Miller, Mark Norton, Ayon Kumar Dey and Frederick Kierulf

…Traveltime and amplitude based techniques to detect seismic anisotropy have inherent differences in their assumptions and the underlying physics used to describe the seismic response. For this reason, they often produce conflicting solutions, which can lead to inconsistencies between the results. Traveltime methods estimate an interval property, providing an easy…

Airborne Electromagnetic Systems – State of the Art and Future Directions

Jean M. Legault

…Airborne electromagnetics (AEM) is easily one of the most popular geophysical methods used in mineral exploration around the world and is possibly second to only aeromagnetics-radiometrics as being the most widely deployed. AEM was initially developed after the Second World War to explore for mineral deposits (Fountain, 1998), and since…

Mirko Van Der Baan

An Interview with Mirko Van Der Baan

…Please tell us about your educational background, employment and experience? I graduated from Utrecht University in the Netherlands with the equivalent of an M.Sc. degree in Geophysics; next went to Grenoble, France where I learned to climb and ski and also got a Ph.D., then on to Leeds in the…

Andreas Cordsen

An Interview with Andreas Cordsen

…Our readers would like to get to know you better, so tell us about your educational background and your work experience. As I started my university education in Germany, my history of obtaining degrees might be surprising to quite a few readers: while starting out in mineralogy, actually crystallography to…

President’s Message

…Wow – thank you. GeoConvention was different for me this year. I felt as if everyone had more purpose. There was more intent to learn from exhibitors, to interact with fellow delegates and an appreciation for sponsors and volunteers. Time was precious and I was unable to attend all the…

CAGC Column

…After the Supreme Court of Canada granted declaration of aboriginal title of more than 1,700 square kilometres of land in British Columbia to the Tsilhqot’in First Nation in June of 2014 the power of the Aboriginal rights movement has continued to strengthen. As I write this article Clyde River, Nunavut…

Volunteer Spotlight

…Digital Media Committee The Digital Media Committee (DMC) is one of the CSEG sub-committees that works tirelessly in the background ensuring that the website, Twitter, LinkedIn and other digital communications are functioning and effective. Jason Schweigert has recently replaced Will McCarthy as Chair of the DMC and is supported by…

Science Break: The U-Curve

…This curve (Figure 1) describes the level of general happiness over an average person’s life. Studies are consistently showing the same result – human happiness starts high in youth, reaches a low point in mid-life, and then rises until death. Our late life happiness levels actually exceed those of youth.…

Tracing the Industry

…Member News While visiting New Zealand in March 2015, Rachel Newrick spent an afternoon at Victoria University of Wellington discussing the petroleum industry, the CSEG, a petroleum based course being developed within their Earth Science department and then gave a presentation on Petroleum Exploration in Frontier Regions to approximately 50…

Grapevine

…Calgary Geoscience Data Managers Network “Learn @ Lunch” Wednesday, June 17th 2015, 12pm – 1pm Katalyst Data Management has generously donated a meeting space in the Aquitaine Auditorium, +15 level of 540 – 5 Avenue SW for this and future luncheons. This session, our presentation will highlight: “Seismic Field and…

From Recommender Systems to 5D Seismic Data Reconstruction

Mauricio D. Sacchi

…In recent years, the development of recommendation systems has become an important area of research for data scientists. A recommendation system (or recommender system) is an algorithm that attempts to predict the rating that a user or costumer will give to an item. Recommendation systems have become quite popular in…

Introduction to May Focus: Rock Physics

Douglas R. Schmitt

…Practitioners of Rock Physics can sometimes become quite Emo when a bunch of Punks call us Geeks because we Breakcore and Grindcore. But, if you need to make a piece of Experimental Rock, particularly if it is from a Hard-core, you sometimes have to Thrash it in your Garage. Okay,…

Resistivity and density estimation from multicomponent seismic data: case study from the lower cretaceous McMurray formation, Athabasca Oil Sands

Fred Mayer, Carmen C. Dumitrescu, Glenn Larson

…We present a case study of oil sands reservoir characterization using resistivity and density seismic volumes estimated from multicomponent seismic data. In the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Alberta, the Lower Cretaceous McMurray Formation is the reservoir. In this reservoir the sand can be differentiated from shale based on density.…

Empirical relations between ultrasonic P-wave velocity, porosity and uniaxial compressive strength

Xiwei Chen, Douglas R. Schmitt, James A. Kessler, James Evans, Randy Kofman

…The uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) is one of the most important geotechnical properties of rock and it has been widely used in geological and geo-mechanical engineering projects. In this study, UCS and other basic physical properties of 165 basalt samples at 55 different depths along zone of interest (ZOI) from…

Study of elastic anisotropy on an unconventional ‘shale’ rock using ultrasonic waves and static strain measurements

O.N. Ong, J. Meléndez-Martínez, D.R. Schmitt, and R. Kofman

…Elastic anisotropy is a seismic attribute defined as the variation of wave speed as a function of its propagation direction within a medium. With the increase in interest of unconventional reservoirs, the incorporation of anisotropic factors is a necessity to provide more accurate seismological models. Without consideration of anisotropic effects,…

Survey Responses on the Public Perception of Induced Seismicity

Neda Boroumand

…A survey was issued by the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists (CSEG) to gauge the public’s perception of induced seismicity (IS) in the summer of 2014. It revealed that education efforts on IS should be collaborative involving industry, academia and regulators, but documents issuing from this work must crucially be…