ASEG Victoria – Technical Meeting Night

ASEG Victoria is pleased to announce the restart of in-person branch events starting with the first technical meeting night of 2021. You are cordially invited to join us for a talk by Mr. Warren Gray from Seisintel on Thursday April 22nd at 6pm at The Kelvin Club.  Admission to this event is free for members only, so please ensure you have renewed your membership for 2021 before registering.

THREE YEARS IN THE MARINE SEISMIC EXPLORATION WORLD

The last three years have been a whirlwind for the offshore marine seismic survey industry. Through 2018-2019 Shearwater had bought WesternGeco’s fleet of 10 seismic vessels and then acquired 7 vessels from CGG. In 2018 Axxis Geo Solutions entered the Ocean Bottom Seismic market with the largest OBN survey conducted in the North Sea. Ocean Bottom Seismic companies Magseis and FairfieldNodal merged. Suriname and Guyana were the new hot spots and West Coast Africa was as busy as ever. Optimism was tentatively returning to discussion at the big exploration conferences. And then 2020 brought about the challenges of COVID-19 with plunging oil prices, slashed exploration budgets, halted projects and challenges in crew and vessel movements. A number of players entered bankruptcy protection or had their banks withdraw support of ongoing vessel operations right in the middle of projects. Using some tools from the Seisintel, we will discuss where the most recent proprietary and multiclient seismic survey activity has been, the latest technologies and acquisition methods being deployed by the industry and look forward to discussing some bright spots of the coming year.

BIO

Warren Gray completed a Bachelor of Surveying at Melbourne University in 1996. Offshore work was always of interest and after cold calling one company in Singapore and a brief ten-minute phone interview, Warren was on the plane one week later. Work was as a navigator and navigation data processor for Western Geophysical on their 3D seismic vessel M/V Western Legend. After three years and during the oil price downturn of 1999 where oil was US$12-barrel, Warren made another cold call from a ship off Angola in West Africa to Veritas (now CGG) in Singapore and was lucky to be offered another job straight away. After six years mostly on the 2D and 3D vessel Pacific Sword around the Asia-Pacific and being married during that period, onshore life was calling in order to start a family. Warren worked as a Survey Officer and later as Environmental Monitoring Manager for the Port of Melbourne during the channel deepening dredging project to deepen the shipping lanes into Melbourne. This brought about a steep learning curve into the GIS and desktop mapping world. The work in the GIS arena proved to be critical to his next role in 2009 where he was geodetic support for Fugro-Geoteam and then CGG. Tasked with design, mapping and planning of marine seismic surveys for tenders and operations, the insight into all facets of the industry were continually compounding. When the opportunity came up late in 2016, Warren jumped at the chance to work with Searcher Seismic and is now Technical Director of their Seisintel product range.

Please register your interest in attending this technical meeting night by using the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/aseg-victoria-technical-meeting-night-tickets-148513609203

Light refreshments will be provided on the evening.  The committee looks forward to this long overdue reunion with fellow members.  We hope to see you all there once again!