CSEG Foundation Outreach

…2013 Western Inter-University Geoscience Conference (WIUGC) WIUGC 2013 The CSEG Foundation recently sponsored the 2013 Western Inter-University Geoscience Conference (WIUGC) which was hosted by the University of British Columbia’s G.M. Dawson Club in Vancouver from January 3rd – 5th. Two CSEG representatives, Mike Smorodin of Apoterra Seismic Processing Ltd. and…

Science Break: Encryption, part one – the pre-digital era

…The science of encryption is as broad as it is ancient. Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have devised innumerable methods to keep information secret from, or unintelligible to, others. It is a huge topic, so in part one I will look at a few historical methods of encryption,…

Tracing the Industry

…In Ron Larson’s Executive Message last month he mentioned that past presidents told him writing a monthly column for the RECORDER was one of their hardest tasks. As Kristy, Roger and I know writing a monthly column certainly is challenging. Kristy and I don’t write the whole column like Roger,…

Grapevine

…Is it Spring yet? End whine… (it is -36°C with the windchill as I type.) I was just out at the 41st Doodlespiel weekend in Banff, and just wanted to say thanks to the Doodlespiel Committee for all of their hard work. Roger Edgecombe and his committee put together a…

Simultaneous time-lapse processing for improved repeatability

Jeff Grossman

…In conjunction with amplitude-friendly simultaneous processing of time-lapse seismic data, we introduce a QC scheme that steers the processing towards optimal time-lapse repeatability. We compute NRMS errors between stacked traces for different vintages of a survey after each main step of simultaneous processing. A processing step (which may include intermediate…

Larry Matthews

An Interview with Larry Matthews

…Larry let’s begin by asking you about your educational background and your work experience. I grew up and attended Elementary and High School in London, Ontario. That’s back in the days when there was a Grade XIII. After graduation I moved on to the University of Western Ontario and started…

Introduction to this special section: Reservoir Characterization

Satinder Chopra

…As geoscientists and engineers started realizing that more oil and gas could be squeezed out of existing reservoirs, awareness about characterizing the reservoirs grew, gradually at first and rapidly later. Apparently, the three main reasons that led to the development of reservoir characterization can be listed as follows: The rapid…

Dynamic reservoir characterization of the Lower Cretaceous Paluxy Formation, Delhi Field, Louisiana

Holly Robinson and Tom Davis

…Delhi Field is a producing oil field located in the Madison, Franklin and Richland parishes of northeastern Louisiana (Figure 1). The field is 15 miles long and 2 to 2.5 miles wide, with an aerial extent of 6,200 acres. Delhi Field was discovered in 1944 and is estimated to contain…

Characterization of a heavy oil reservoir combining multiattribute analysis and spectral decomposition for density prediction, Maturín Sub-basin, Venezuela

Fabiola Ruiz and Milagrosa Aldana

…Summary The main objective of this work is to characterize a heavy oil reservoir located at the southern flank of the Maturín Sub- Basin. A rock physics analysis showed that the acoustic impedances of sandstones and shales are very similar within the reservoir, but density is a good lithological indicator.…

Seismic Lithology Prediction: A Montney Shale Gas Case Study

John Nieto, Bogdan Batlai, and Franck Delbecq

…Introduction In any oil or natural gas development – conventional or unconventional – it is important to understand lithology, as it is a fundamental building block for all reservoir characterization work. Field development is enhanced by the ability to spatially predict different rock-types which in turn have different properties such…

New attribute for determination of lithology and brittleness

Ritesh K. Sharma and Satinder Chopra

…Summary The discrimination of fluid content and lithology in a reservoir is an important characterization that has a bearing on reservoir development and its management. For the unconventional reservoirs, such as shale gas formations, besides other favorable considerations that are expected of them, it is vital that reservoir zones are…

Presidential Column

…New Immigration Stream for Skilled Tradespeople Canada will open its doors to 3,000 skilled tradespeople starting next year under a new immigration stream set to launch Jan. 2, 2013, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Monday. “The new skilled trades stream will help address serious labour shortages in some regions of…

Executive Message

…This column marks my only RECORDER column as Vice President, and serves as an introduction to the 10 President’s Column articles required of me over the next year. A couple of former CSEG Presidents have told me the hardest part of their term was writing columns for the RECORDER. While…

CAGC Column

…The 2012 Winter Solstice came and went with hardly a whimper. Coupled with the end of the Mayan calendar, doomsday for the Earth was prophesied by some. And in today’s culture of instant media and universal Internet access this type of prophetic statement certainly received a lot of attention. However…

CSEG Foundation Outreach

…AUGC 2012 The Atlantic University Geoscience Conference (AUGC) is one of the most successful student conferences in the region. 2012 saw the 62nd anniversary of the event, hosted by Dalhousie University. Approximately 180 geoscience students attended the conference from the following Atlantic Universities: St. Francis Xavier, St Mary’s, Acadia, Memorial,…

Science Break: Plant Hydraulics

…The call came on a Sunday evening back in the fall. “This is Xishuo. It’s started – can you come over?” “We’ll be there in about 15 minutes,” I responded. “It” was the spectacular blooming of one of Xishuo’s moon flower plants (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) (Wikipedia, 2012a). These plants, originally from…

Tracing the Industry

…This month I am doing something different. I am starting the column with GIVING BACK. The charity talked about in this portion of the column deals with Child Sexual Abuse. I urge you to support this cause in any way that you can. Giving Back… Victor Walk – Bill Goodwin,…

Grapevine

…Happy February! I was recently at the Western Inter-University Geosciences Conference (WIUGC) hosted by UBC the first weekend in January, and just wanted to say how impressed I was by the student-run organizational committee headed up by Nikki Marsh. There were around 100 students in attendance from most of the…

Introduction to the Fracture Analysis Focus Articles

Bill Goodway

…The paradigm change of hydraulic fracture stimulation is to artificially create reservoirs in unconventional source rocks, where production was previously unimaginable. Effective stimulation requires either the connection to existing natural fractures or the presence of geomechanical brittleness capable of supporting extensive induced fractures. As very few tight formations are thick,…

A Math-free Look at Azimuthal Surface Seismic Techniques

Franck Delbecq, Jon Downton and Mark Letizia

…Many interpreters are interested in characterizing fractured reservoirs using 3D surface seismic data, and there are a variety of azimuthal techniques to extract this information from the data. However, once the results from two or more methods are compared the question may arise: why do the results from various azimuthal…