e-Books

The book ‘Microseismicity: a tool for reservoir characterization’ describes the principles of seismicity-based reservoir characterization and the main quantitative features of different types of induced microseismicity. It addresses different aspects of reservoir characterization and hydraulic fracturing and also the magnitude distribution of seismicity induced by borehole fluid injections.

“OPERATIONAL GEOMECHANICS” is a new concept coined by the author. It encompasses all aspects of rock stress and rock failure in the lithosphere, both artificially induced and naturally occurring. It applies to a full range of depths from surface/near surface to extremely challenging depths and environments.

Thus, it presents the principal tools and tests relevant to the full array of geomechanical applications for assessing and accessing the Earth’s energy, mineral and water resources, as well as for environmental probing, conservation, natural hazards, and waste disposal. As such the book is a challenge to the traditional approach of compartmentalising geomechanics into discrete topics and instead presents a wholistic geomechanical workflow involving:

1. The characterization of the mechanical and stress properties of the rock mass targeted in environmental, engineering and energy operations of human activities and natural hazards such as earthquakes.
2. The timely prediction of instability risks to both infrastructure and drill holes associated with the above
activities.
3. Recommending, designing and conducting preventative precautions for the identifiable instability risks, and remedial steps to mitigate and/or stop subsequent instability damage.

The ultimate objectives of OPERATIONAL GEOMECHANICS are saving time, costs and lives, and in that context, the book discusses the building blocks of the topic in terms of: definitions of geomechanical/rock mechanical parameters; tools; analysis; and interpretations utilized particularly in operations involving drilling/boring operations relevant to all the above engineering, energy and environmental applications. In the final part of the book the
author gives examples of key drilling-related applications.

The book is enriched by the author’s industrial experience which spans more than three decades and will be a suitable text book for undergraduate and graduate students and a practical guide to professionals and managers alike working on projects for which operational geomechanics plays a vital role.

Hydrocarbons (petroleum and gas) result from the transformation of organic matter within sedimentary rocks. Three conditions are necessary for an hydrocarbon accumulation to be formed: the presence of a source rock in which, if present, the organic matter will be transformed; the existence of reservoir rocks in which hydrocarbons will migrate and evolve; the presence of traps in which oil and gas will be accumulated and concentrated.
This book covers the spectrum of petroleum geology from the initial sedimentology to the economic aspects of estimations of resources and reserves on a planetary scale. It includes the study of the migration of fluids in the sediment through exploration methods, the exploitation of the accumulations and the typology of oil fields.
The book is addressed to master’s degree students, petroleum exploration professionals wanting to update their know-how and knowledge skills.

This book offers an in-depth overview on the risks associated to Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Near-Surface Geophysical Prospecting, providing the reader with practical recommendations for the safety of people and instruments.
The book stems out from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar” (www.GPRadar.eu). It also benefited from the significant contribution of renowned experts not involved in the Action.
Among the main topics dealt with in the book, the reader will find:
– general recommendations for a safe prospecting and minimal safety equipment to be brought in the field;
– specific advice for experimental campaigns carried out in challenging environmental situations;
– appropriate precautions related to specific kinds of GPR applications;
– dangers associated to electromagnetic emissions and European regulations for GPR manufacturers and end-users.
The book includes a short medical first aid guide as well, which is specifically conceived for near-surface geophysical prospecting. Suggestions for correct use and safe transport of the equipment are finally provided.

Sedimentary structures that show up in outcrops and cores tell us about physical, biological and sometimes also chemical conditions at the time they were formed.
Varying hydraulic or aerodynamic conditions result in assemblages of structures that often bear diagnostic features of sedimentary environments. Therefore an understanding of the origin of sedimentary structures and their assemblages is a prerequisite for sedimentologists and petroleum geologists involved in core description and interpretation.
The main objective of this book is to bring together the present basic knowledge on the relation between sedimentary structures, bedforms and hydraulic conditions. The book is part of post-graduate Short Courses in Advanced Sedimentology and Stratigraphy for the petroleum industry offered by ENRES International. In these courses much attention is given to the recognition of sedimentary environments from diagnostic features of sedimentary structures and assemblages of structures. For this purpose practicals are given using a selection of lacquer peels and cores representing typical fluvial to estuarine, coastal and eolian environments. This material including its interpretation is published as a regularly updated stand-alone document that can be obtained from ENRES.
One of the pioneering publications on this subject was a series of SEPM symposium papers published in 1965 (Middleton, 1965b). A more comprehensive publication on sediment movement by fluid flow and the resulting sedimentary structures was followed in 1972 (Blatt, Middleton and Murray, 1972). After that many excellent publications and textbooks were published (e.g. Allen, 1984, 1985; Bridge and Demicco, 2008; Collinson and Thompson, 1989; Harms et al., 1982; Hs?, 1989; Leeder, 1999; Reineck and Singh, 1980). These publications are partly covering a much wider scope as presented in this book, but are at some points not going into the desired details and are partly outdated.
We have no intention to offer a new comprehensive textbook. The main goal of this book is to introduce the terminology and fundamental concepts that are necessary for the description and interpretation of the hydraulic background of sedimentary structures in siliciclastic deposits. Another objective of this book is to put this topic within the newly developed framework of modern stratigraphy (e.g. sequence stratigraphy and climate stratigraphy). Also some important new insights from recent research at the University of Utrecht and unique data of sedimentary structures from outcrops up to 15m below mean sea level have been added. A specially-designed Core Simulation software has been developed in cooperation with Statoil which will be used during the course and the practicals.

Three-dimensional geomechanical models have seen a rapid increase in use by the oil and gas industry, with applications from drilling to reservoir management. Yet few university programmes include applied geomechanics as part of their curriculum. This course aims to fill this gap and presents currently available methods to build, calibrate and interpret 3D and 4D geomechanical models. The course participant will become comfortable with stress and strain tensors, understand the basics of deriving elastic and strength properties, learn how to use seismic data to build geomechanical models and understand the importance of calibrating geomechanical models with observations.

Multiple reflections have been a major problem since the beginning of seismic exploration. In the last five decades a range of methods have been developed to suppress these reflections and enhance the primaries. This book provides an overview of these techniques, starting with the deconvolution-based methods from the 1960s, via the move-out discrimination techniques of the 1980s and ending up with wave-equation based methods from the 1990s and their 3D extensions as developed in the 2000s.
Furthermore, the current challenges in multiple removal and their relation with seismic imaging and inversion are treated. Besides this overview, the book also discusses processing concepts that are required to better understand various technologies, such as high-resolution seismic data transforms (Fourier, Radon), adaptive filtering techniques, wave-equation based forward and inverse wave propagation and the processing of seismic data in different transform domains. The emphasis is not to thoroughly treat the mathematics but to present some understanding of the physical concepts behind each method, illustrated with clear examples.

Time-lapse seismic surveys or 4D seismic offers snapshots of a producing hydrocarbon reservoir and its surroundings and is the most common seismic surveillance technique in the oil and gas industry. New developments of this technology includes permanent seismic installations; observations of changes outside the reservoirs and a link to geomechanics and the use of passive recordings. In this book we are using examples from the Valhall field to illustrate examples of seismic surveillance that will include data examples from marine towed 4D, frequent surveying using permanently installed sensors, in-well recordings and analysis of passive data, including micro seismicity. Some of the historical 4D examples, an update on the state of use of permanent recordings systems are also discussed.

This book presents a systematic approach to imaging of acoustic reflection measurements and the extraction of media property information from the image amplitudes, based on wave theory.
Although the approach is valid for a wide range of acoustical frequencies and applications, there is a bias towards seismic imaging, because imaging the earth is one of the most challenging of all acoustical imaging applications.
In addition, in oil and gas exploration and production applications the need to obtain quantitative information on the media properties of the object to be imaged is most strongly felt. However, the methods presented are equally valid for ultra-sonic non-destructive testing, or medical diagnostic applications.
The theory of acoustic wave propagation is presented, from the constituent equations Hooke and Newton, to the acoustic wave equation, to wavefield extrapolation and to extraction of image amplitudes. A feature of this book is the careful analysis of every step in these processes in terms of the linearity of the wavefields in the media property representation they are inverted for. Alternatively, the extrapolated wavefields can be inverted directly for the media properties. Towards the end of the book it is demonstrated that significantly higher resolution quantitative information can be obtained if the non-linearity is taken into account

Velocities, Imaging, and Waveform Inversion - The evolution of characterizing the Earth’s subsurface is part of Ian Jones' EAGE Education Tour and will be a fusion of practical industrial elements, concentrating on the origin and nature of the geological complexities that give rise to imaging problems, as well as a physical (rather than mathematical) understanding of subsurface parameter estimation, and will also look at some possible future directions. The course is designed for: practising geoscientists who desire to better understand the principles and limitations of both current and emerging technologies involved in subsurface parameter estimation and imaging and geoscience students. Following this course, participants should ideally understand how contemporary velocity estimation methods work, and what approximations are involved in obtaining computationally tractable solutions.
In using sound waves to characterise the Earth’s subsurface, we can employ ray theory and/or wave theory, and both migration algorithms and parameter estimation schemes employ one or other of these theoretical descriptions. In this course, we will review the evolution of the industry’s approaches to building earth models via velocity estimation and imaging, outlining the evolution from ray tomography to full waveform inversion, and look towards the emerging possibilities for replacing imaging techniques with direct subsurface parameter inversion methods.
The approach will be mostly non-mathematical, concentrating on an intuitive understanding of the principles, demonstrating them via case histories, and will be divided into the following sections:
- Dealing with the near surface
- The effects of strong vertical velocity contrasts
- The effects of strong lateral velocity contrasts
- Waves versus rays - Model building using ray methods (tomography)
- Model building using wavefield extrapolation methods (FWI)
- Data examples and comparisons
- Future developments
The first three sections outline the nature of the problems we face when building images representing subsurface impedance contrasts, and the next three deal with the technology we deploy to address the problems. In addition, I have included three appendices to outline: the historical development of model building, anisotropy and pre-processing considerations for complex imaging. Several of the individual chapters build on a series of recent tutorial papers which I published in First Break. However, only the key points from these tutorial papers are included, so I refer readers to the original papers for more detail and/or a range of real data examples for each of their topics.
However, due to space and time constraints in the EET format, I have had to omit or limit coverage of various topics, including migration of multiples, Marchenko and inverse scattering series migration, joint migration-inversion, least-squares migration and uncertainty estimation.