ASEG WA 2017 April Tech Meeting/SEG 2017 Distinguished Lecturer

The WA Branch of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the SEG invites you to attend the upcoming ASEG WA Tech Night presented by the 2017 SEG Distinguished Lecturer Paul Hatchell of Shell, Houston, Texas, USA.

Getting more for less: Frequent low-cost seismic monitoring solutions for offshore fields

Time-lapse seismic reservoir surveillance is a proven technology for offshore environments. In the past two decades, we have seen this technology move from novel to necessary and enable us to monitor injection wells, water influx, compaction, undrained fault blocks, and bypassed reserves.  Value is generated by influencing the management of our field operations and optimising wells to reduce cost, accelerate production, and increase ultimate recovery.

Significant advances in technology are improving the quality of our data. Errors in acquisition repeats are nearly eliminated using permanently installed systems or dedicated ocean- bottom nodes. We now routinely obtain surveys with such a high signal-to-noise ratio that we can observe production-induced changes in the reservoir after months instead of years. This creates a demand for frequent seismic monitoring to better understand the dynamic behaviour of our fields. Increasing the frequency of seismic monitoring will have a proportionate cost implication, and a challenge is how to design a monitoring program that maximises the overall benefit to the field.

Reducing individual survey costs is important to enable frequent monitoring.

Paul Hatchell joined Shell in 1989 after receiving his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin. He began his career at Shell’s Technology Center in Houston and worked on a variety of research topics including shear-wave logging, quantitative seismic amplitude analysis, and 3D AVO applications. Following a four-year oil and gas exploration assignment in Shell’s New Orleans office, Paul returned to Shell’s technology centers in Rijswijk and Houston where he is currently a member of the Areal Field Monitoring team and Shell’s principal technical expert for 4D reservoir surveillance. His current activities include developing improved 4D seismic acquisition and interpretation techniques, seafloor deformation monitoring, and training the next generation of geoscientists.
 

Event website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aseg-wa-april-tech-night-seismic-talk-tickets-32998714042

Registration Costs:              Free to members and non members 

Registration closing date:    Thursday 30th March 2017