Education

CSEG DoodleTrain

Multicomponent Seismic Exploration in Western Canada

Instructor: Richard A. Bale / Robert Kendall
Date: November 3, 2010
Duration: 1 day
Members (early bird/price): $350/$450 CDN (plus GST)
Non-Members (early bird/price): $400/$500 CDN (plus GST)

Venue: Schlumberger, Turner Valley 2&3 (ground floor) – 525 -3rd Ave SW
Time: 8:00am - 5:00pm

Audience:

The course should be useful to processing and interpretation geophysicists who want to understand their multicomponent data better, or are wondering if multicomponent can help with their exploration objectives. The theory section will contain some mathematics, but details will be kept to a minimum, and visual understanding emphasized.

Course Description:

Multicomponent surface seismic data can provide valuable additional information when used and interpreted with conventional P-wave data. In particular, the use of the latest generation of MEMS sensors can provide improved conventional P-wave data, more reliable rock property information, lithology discrimination, fluid identification, fracture and stress identification and characterization as well as improved imaging (for example below gas clouds, beneath salt and basalt and in low impedance PP reservoirs). This course discusses the underlying theory of elastic waves, and the use of multicomponent seismic data from acquisition to interpretation.

Course Outline:

  1. Theory of elastic waves
    • Vector seismic - polarization P and S waves (SV, SH)
    • Mode conversion: converted wave ray-paths and amplitudes, polarity issues
    • Attenuation and resolution of S and PS waves
    • Anisotropy: VTI effects, shear-wave splitting
  2. Multicomponent acquisition
    • Virtual tour of modern MEMS crews at work
  3. Processing multicomponent data
    • Polarization filtering
    • Tilt correction and rotation
    • Converted-wave binning, NMO and velocities
    • Shear-wave statics
    • Migration, time and depth
    • Shear-wave splitting analysis, processing in S1 and S2 coordinates
  4. Interpretation/ case studies
    • Some tools available for MC interpretation
    • Improved P-wave imaging using multicomponent sensors
    • Heavy Oil case study for lithology discrimination
    • Gas production optimization using PP and PS data, Oklahoma
    • Carbonate fracture identification and characterization

Presenter / Instructor Biography:

Richard Bale holds both a BA and an MA in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in the UK. He began his geophysical career with GECO in the UK in 1984, and continued with Schlumberger Geco-Prakla, in both the UK and Norway, as a senior research geophysicist. From 1997 to 2001 he was project manager for multicomponent processing development for Geco-Prakla and WesternGeco, responsible for software used to process 4-C data in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. He moved to Calgary in 2001 to pursue research with the CREWES consortium and obtained a Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Calgary in 2006, receiving the award for outstanding Ph.D. thesis in Geology and Geophysics, for his work on anisotropic elastic migration. Dr. Bale has worked for Veritas/CGGVeritas in Calgary since 2004, where he is currently a geophysical research scientist. He has authored or co-authored a number of SEG, EAGE and CSEG papers on aspects of multicomponent processing, including converted-wave binning, shear-wave splitting analysis and elastic migration.

Rob Kendall is currently employed with Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. as a Senior Geophysicist in Calgary. His two main areas of focus are heavy oil reservoir characterization at the Whitesands site in Alberta's oil sands and the interpretation of the Bakken resource play of the Williston Basin in southeast Saskatchewan. From 1988 until 1990 he worked in seismic data acquisition with Solid State Exploration mostly in western Canada and northwestern U.S.A. In 1992 he began work for Amoco Exploration and Production in Houston, then he moved to the Amoco Tulsa Research Center and eventually the Offshore Business Unit in New Orleans. Rob left BP-Amoco shortly after the merger in 1999 and moved back to Calgary to work with Geoscope. In 2000 he joined Veritas GeoServices and started the Multicomponent Processing Group. He managed that group until joining Petrobank in 2006. Rob has worked with shear data (both pure- and converted-mode) from the western United States, the Netherlands, Norway, the Gulf of Mexico (US and Mexico) and many of the fields of western Canada in both the borehole environment and the surface seismic environment. He received his M.S. from the Colorado School of Mines in 1992 and his B.Sc. from the University of Calgary in 1988. Rob enjoys skiing and mountain biking in his spare time.