Explorer Geophysical Corner

The challenges of the Mina El Carmen Formation can be overcome by evaluating the application of various interpretation tools and special processes, so that the reservoir sands can be detected and visualized in terms of their geometry, orientation, extension, thickness and position in the stratigraphic column.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

A strategy gaining force to reduce risk and improve decision-making in recent years is “integration,” the practice of combining disparate teams to complete single projects. Integrated teams are increasingly common in the energy sector, where single business units include geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, engineers and other professionals who work on a common project.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

Advances in deep learning and artificial intelligence promise to not only drive our cars but also taste our beer. Specifically, recent advances in the architecture of deep-learning convolutional neural networks have brought the field of image classification and computer vision to a new level.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Saudi Aramco hopes to push the boundaries of exploration by creating and encouraging new technologies. The company said it is pursuing the promise of “the fourth industrial revolution” through Big Data and supercomputing and investigations into nanotechnology applications.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

All interpreters have been annoyed when a clear through- going fault seen on a vertical slice through the seismic amplitude volume appears to have holes in the discontinuity on a vertical slice through the corresponding coherence volume.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Exploration and development drilling along the upper region of the Middle Pennsylvanian Red Fork Sandstone has been going on since 1979 in the western part of the Anadarko basin of Oklahoma. Fangyu Li, a postdoctoral research associate in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia, said the latest technology in multispectral coherence is developing to a point where scientists can see more of what’s down there and they can see it more clearly.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

“Big data” and “data analytics” are the buzzwords these days. In the last decade, our industry grappled not only with ever-larger volumes of data, but also with increased data heterogeneity. Recent developments in data analytic capabilities applied to other industries hold significant promise for those of working in the hydrocarbon exploration and development.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

If a taint exists on the use of geophysics to evaluate fracturing operations, it is this: ‘T ain’t easy. In fact it’s downright difficult, said Arash Dahi Taleghani, associate professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State University, whose research areas include studying how natural fractures can affect hydraulic-fracture geometry and using seismic for modeling natural fractures and post-treatment fracture analysis.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

Coherence is an iconic attribute that finds its place in most workstation interpretation software packages. Much has been written about this attribute and the usefulness of its applications. The geologic feature imaging in three-dimensional seismic data volumes is done well by the coherence attribute as three-dimensionality is an essential ingredient of its computation.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Geomechanics has emerged as a major aspect of unconventional resource development, as demonstrated by its preeminence within this year’s URTeC program.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) seismic-reflection surveys provide one of the most important data types for understanding subsurface depositional systems. Quantitative analysis is commonly restricted to geophysical interpretation of elastic properties of rocks in the subsurface. Wide availability of 3D seismic-reflection data and integration provide opportunities for quantitative analysis of subsurface stratigraphic sequences. Here, we integrate traditional seismic-stratigraphic interpretation with quantitative geomorphologic analysis and numerical modeling to explore new insights into submarine-channel evolution.

Show more

Request a visit from Jacob Covault!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Around 170 million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico basin flooded catastrophically, and the pre-existing landscape, which had been a very rugged, arid, semi-desert world, was drowned beneath an inland sea of salt water. The drowned landscape was then buried under kilometers of salt, perfectly preserving the older topography. Now, with high-quality 3D seismic data, the salt appears as a transparent layer, and the details of the drowned world can be seen in exquisite detail, providing a unique snapshot of the world on the eve of the flooding event. We can map out hills and valleys, and a system of river gullies and a large, meandering river system. These rivers in turn fed into a deep central lake, whose surface was about 750m below global sea level. This new knowledge also reveals how the Louann Salt was deposited. In contrast to published models, the salt was deposited in a deep water, hypersaline sea. We can estimate the rate of deposition, and it was very fast; we believe that the entire thickness of several kilometers of salt was laid down in a few tens of thousands of years, making it possibly the fastest sustained deposition seen so far in the geological record.

Show more

Request a visit from Frank Peel!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

In comparison with the known boundary conditions that promote salt deformation and flow in sedimentary basins, the processes involved with the mobilization of clay-rich detrital sediments are far less well established. This talk will use seismic examples in different tectonic settings to document the variety of shale geometries that can be formed under brittle and ductile deformations.

Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

Related Interests

See Also ...