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- Volume 23, Issue 7, 2005
First Break - Volume 23, Issue 7, 2005
Volume 23, Issue 7, 2005
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Seeing E&P data through a new lens
By A. McBarnetSome inventions seem so obvious it’s hard to believe no one had thought of them before. Such would be the case with Pliable Display Technology (PDT), a remarkable visualization tool developed by a small Canadian company, IDELIX Software. PDT has already captured the attention of the North American defence and intelligence community and may soon be heading the way of the E&P industry. Andrew McBarnet reports.
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Development of a tri-directional helicopter gradiometer for mineral exploration applications
Authors G.M. Hollyer and I. HrvoicGreg Hollyer and Ivan Hrvoic, GEM Advanced Magnetometers, review the principles of optically pumped Potassium magnetometers and the tri-directional gradiometer including its design considerations, and conclude with a discussion of the role of magnetic gradients in mineral exploration.
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Application of high-resolution 3D seismic to mine planning in shallow platinum mines
Authors E. Gillot, M. Gibson, D. Verneau and S. LarocheEric Gillot, Mark Gibson, Dominique Verneau, and Stephane Laroche explain how 3D seismic imaging was able to prove an attractive alternative to ‘total drilling’ in the context of a platinum mining production project.
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Controlled source electromagnetic inversion for resource exploration
Authors D. Oldenburg, R. Eso, S. Napier and E. HaberDouglas Oldenburg, Robert Eso, Scott Napier, and Eldad Haber discuss their work on inverting controlled source electromagnetic data as a means to enhance the effectiveness of electrical conductivity in exploration for both minerals and hydrocarbons.
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Diversity and balance – keys to meeting China’s energy challenges / China’s peaceful rise – an energy perspective from BP
China is on everyone’s mind these days as one of the key determinants of the future market for energy. Two recent presentations by senior representatives from Shell and BP provide an insight into Super Major strategy to meet the challenge of a potential competitor and customer.
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Study reservoir flow anomaly through mapping a fracture network
Authors M. Luo, I. Takahashi, M. Takanashi and Y. TamuraFlow behaviour in many naturally fractured reservoirs is largely controlled by subsurface fracture network, and could be predicted through studying seismic anisotropy. This study demonstrates a case study of predicting a flow anomaly by mapping a reservoir fracture network using ocean bottom cable (OBC) seismic data.
Introduction Seven of the 10 largest reservoirs in the world are carbonates often with very low permeability, and the only economical way to recover oil and gas is to find fractures which work as conduits. Thus knowledge of fracture network is indispensable. There are various ways to detect fractures either directly (e.g., core analysis, downhole measurements, etc.) or remotely (e.g., seismic methods). Log- and corebased methods and borehole break-out analysis provide some fracture information. Yet, this information is usually limited because results obtained from such methods usually have very limited spatial coverage. On the other hand, the presence of vertical fractures and/or aligned porous grains alter a rock’s physical properties, and can cause seismic azimuthal anisotropy: in such rocks, seismic waves will sense various degrees of stiffness and compliance of the rocks depending on the direction of wave propagation, resulting in amplitude and velocity variations with azimuth. This phenomenon can be detected through properly-designed seismic surveys (Lynn and Thomsen, 1986; Mallick and Frazer, 1987). Recent research on seismic fracture detection (MacBeth et al., 1999; Li et al., 2003; Burns et al., 2004; Luo et al., 2005) further demonstrated the viability in detecting fractures much smaller than the seismic wavelength using conventional 3D P-wave data. The common practice of fracture detection using 3D P-wave data is to extract seismic azimuthal anisotropy and utilize the azimuthal information to quantitatively predict fracture strike and fracture density. The seismically- estimated fracture information may then be interpreted with reservoir models to determine important reservoir parameters such as tensor permeabilities and/or fluid-flow directions (Holmes and Thomsen, 2002; Laribi et al., 2003). The primary objective of this study was to map a possible fracture network for a target layer and study its impact on fluid flow, using OBC seismic data recorded from an offshore carbonate production field known to have unexpected early water breakthrough. The task was carried out in two steps: (1) construction of multi-azimuthal attribute maps for a target layer and (2) description of the fracture network through strike and density estimated from the seismic anisotropy of attribute maps built in the first step. An overburden-effect reduction process was applied to the data to improve the fracture mapping. It was hoped that a better understanding of the subsurface fracture system, in combination with known large-scale faults, would explain a known flow anomaly.
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A complex 3D volume for sub-basalt imaging
Authors F. Martini, R.W. Hobbs, C.J. Bean and R. SingleThick successions of basalt and basaltic-andesite lavas flows were extruded during continental break-up and they cover pre-existing sedimentary basins often of interest for hydrocarbon exploration. With conventional seismic acquisition and processing methods, it is difficult to image both the internal architecture of the volcanic succession as well as the underlying sub-basalt structure. The use of synthetic data can help us to understand the poor sub-basalt imaging quality and to develop effective acquisition and processing approaches useful for real data. Moreover, non-seismic methods have been successful in improving understanding of overall geometries of sub-basalt targets. Therefore, integration of seismic and non-seismic data seems to yield promising results and needs to be explored further. From all these considerations, the necessity of a realistic 3D basalt model that would allow simulating realistic seismic and non-seismic data, on one hand to test seismic acquisition and processing techniques, and on the other to develop strategies for geophysical data integration into a common methodology to overcome the sub-basalt imaging problem. A complex 3D model was built adapting all the information available from interpretation of seismic data, log data, gravity data, and geological observation. Seismic and non-seismic synthetic data have been produced on the model. In this paper we present the methodology to develop the 3D model as well as the initial results from data simulations. The model and the data are available to the public, through the authors of the present paper.
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 42 (2024)
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Volume 41 (2023)
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Volume 40 (2022)
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Volume 39 (2021)
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Volume 38 (2020)
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Volume 37 (2019)
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Volume 36 (2018)
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Volume 35 (2017)
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Volume 34 (2016)
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Volume 33 (2015)
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Volume 32 (2014)
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Volume 31 (2013)
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Volume 30 (2012)
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Volume 29 (2011)
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Volume 28 (2010)
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Volume 27 (2009)
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Volume 26 (2008)
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Volume 25 (2007)
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Volume 24 (2006)
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Volume 23 (2005)
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Volume 22 (2004)
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Volume 21 (2003)
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Volume 20 (2002)
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Volume 19 (2001)
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Volume 18 (2000)
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Volume 17 (1999)
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Volume 16 (1998)
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Volume 15 (1997)
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Volume 14 (1996)
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Volume 13 (1995)
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Volume 12 (1994)
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Volume 11 (1993)
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Volume 10 (1992)
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Volume 9 (1991)
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Volume 8 (1990)
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Volume 7 (1989)
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Volume 6 (1988)
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Volume 5 (1987)
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Volume 4 (1986)
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Volume 3 (1985)
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Volume 2 (1984)
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Volume 1 (1983)