Industry

ASEG WA - June Tech Night and Student Award event
Date & Venue:
Thursday 24th June 2021
5:30 pm start - 7.30pm end
The Shoe Bar
Shop GSO7 Yagan Square
376 - 420 Wellington St
Perth CBD

The WA Branch of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists invites you to attend our upcoming ASEG WA Branch Tech night event at our new venue in CBD at Yagan Square, but still with the usual snacks and drinks provided. Note that there is plenty of public transportation, and, if need-be, paid parking is available at nearby Wilson Parking - 427 Murray St - Google Maps. The venue has wheelchair accessibility. The details of the speech title and the author's bio are provided below.

Speech title: The Value of Geophysical Information at the Time of Drilling
Speaker: Dave Lawie, Chief Geoscientist and Chief Technologist, IMDEX

Overview:

The transition to a decarbonized future starts and ends with metals — but there can be no start without the mining industry. Billions of dollars have been allocated globally to improve battery technology and production, electric vehicle production, and storage and charging infrastructure, but where are the key metals and minerals coming from? There are limited supplies to meet increasing demand.

Miners big and small will be required to find, define and mine the crucial metals of the future, including copper for renewable energy infrastructure such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and charging stations; lithium and cobalt for lithium-ion batteries; rare earth and critical minerals; and aluminum, silver, nickel, lead, and zinc. Mining companies in a decarbonized future will have to be adept at finding and supplying these metals from increasingly remote and challenging environments. The difference between success and failure, between an economic and uneconomic deposit will be greater orebody knowledge, which will deliver improved processing intensity, less waste, fewer tailings, less water use, and greater overall efficiencies.

Mining companies able to access reliable data as early as possible at each step of the mining value chain from exploration and drilling, to planning and production, will be in the best position to deliver the metals the world will demand.

Speaker Bio: Dave holds the dual roles of Chief Geoscientist and Chief Technologist – Mining for IMDEX. Prior to joining IMDEX, Dave held global positions in exploration geochemistry and R&D with Pasminco and Anglo American before co-founding ioGlobal in 2004 as Managing Director.

Dave grew ioGlobal into a global company specializing in geochemistry and geometallurgical consulting services, cloud-based data management, and the ioGAS desktop analytics software– the company was acquired by IMDEX in 2012.

Dave has a PhD in Geosciences and Analytics from the University of New England and a trade qualification as an Instrument Technician. 

ASEG WA Branch will also felicitate ASEG WA 2020 student award to four students. REGISTRATION and RSVP are REQUIRED before 22nd June to give our hosts at Shoe Bar enough time to properly set up their venue. ASEG WA Branch would like to give thanks to sponsors for their continuous support.

Please email wasecretary@aseg.org.au with any queries or for additional information. Kindly rsvp at this link to get a spot as seats are limited. We are looking forward to seeing you there.

ASEG Victoria is pleased to announce the first of our winter series of in-person branch events with another superb technical meeting night.  You are cordially invited to join us for a talk by Mr. Mark Grujic (Director, Solve Geosolutions) on Wednesday June 16^th from 6pm at The Kelvin Club.  Admission to this event is free for members so please ensure you have renewed your membership for 2021 before registering.

Advances in the geoscientific application of computer vision

One of the most common datasets available to exploration geoscientists is drill core imagery. Unfortunately, the huge range in quality and general state of core photography can be an impediment to many data-driven image analysis processes. In this talk, methods of dealing with some of the shortcomings of core photo data will be introduced.  Some such methods include the application of Self-Supervised-Learning to obtain models that are agnostic to lighting conditions, blur, resolution and other unwanted artefacts, as well as digital inpainting of geological information in photos that have been masked by core-markup or other obfuscations.  The validity of these processes to gain new insights from geophysical datasets including potential field geophysics data will be discussed.

Bio: Mark graduated from Monash university with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in geophysics. He spent 8 years with Rio Tinto Exploration in Perth and Santiago, initially working on geophysical hardware and processing algorithms, then supporting global exploration programs.  Since 2018, he has worked Solve Geosolutions, Australia’s first dedicated geo-data-science consulting group. In 2019, Solve launched Datarock, a mining and exploration focused computer-vision company, where Mark provides technical insight and product development support.

Note: Light refreshments will be served during the evening.

Please register your interest in attending this event by using the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/aseg-vic-technical-meeting-night-tickets-156186258303

Title: Managing Through (constant) Change And Uncertainty -  The Key Dilemmas Facing Resources Industry Personnel

Presenter: Michelle Henderson

Date: Tuesday  8th June

Time: 16:00 AEST  

Location: Joint Zoom virtual + physical presentation at Geoscience Australia

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yNHpLyXNTOOXe5Qx4FsGSA

Abstract:

The cyclical nature of the resources industry creates very specific challenges across investment through to people management.  Faced with constant ‘instability’, often supply-limited expertise and the uncertainty over discovery, how do we hold on to our people, maintain their enthusiasm and continue to lead success?

As a professional coach across government and scientific agencies, Michelle brings extensive experience to the ‘problem’ and solution.  Her empathetic and pragmatic approach empowers professionals to not only manage change, but to enthusiastically grasp the opportunities it brings. 

Bio:

Michelle Henderson is a professional consultant and coach. She has been consulting to government and scientific agencies for the last six years. Her specialties include executive leadership, change and working with governments.

As a consultant Michelle combines her passion for leadership and innovation. She works with senior leaders to help them manage their teams, and themselves, in constantly changing environments. Her empathetic and pragmatic approach empowers professionals to not only manage change, but to actively seek opportunities to make positive change happen.

Prior to consulting, Michelle worked for 23 years at executive and senior executive levels in the areas of industry, innovation and science policy. Michelle has a deep understanding of Australia’s innovation system and the important role science discovery, research and commercialisation play in knowledge and wealth creation for Australia.

Michelle has postgraduate qualifications in Management (industry strategy) and vocational qualifications in training and development.  She is a level 1 accredited coach.

The next technical meeting will be held on Wednesday 19^th May, we will also be livestreaming it on zoom only (the presentation will not be available for viewing later). Please see details below:

Presenter:          Chris Alfonso (USYD)

Topic:                  The influence of dynamic topography, climate, and tectonics on the Nile River source-to-sink system

Time:                   5:30 for 6pm start

Address:             Level 2, Club York (99 York St, Sydney. Room 'York 2')

Zoom registration:         https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_x9aipncxT3Wn4TIQdr06AA

Meeting registration:    https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TYFG2GM by Monday 17^th May – due to COVID restrictions we require a registration for in-person meetings. If you have trouble registering please email nswsecretary@aseg.org.au 

Summary:

Understanding the more than 30 Myr history of the Nile River can provide great insight into the evolution of one of the world's largest river systems and the major hydrocarbon reserves of the Nile Delta. This work builds on previous studies which explored the relationship between the river's course and the dynamic topography of Northeast Africa by considering additional possible influences on the Nile's evolution such as climate change and tectonics. These factors are incorporated into a numerical landscape evolution and stratigraphic modelling framework which makes use of the Badlands software package (https://badlands.readthedocs.io) to test the effects of multiple different scenarios for each factor. The analysis of model results involves one of the first applications of the techniques of sequence stratigraphy to a realistic numerical model. These results show that while dynamic topography, along with climate change, likely played a significant role in the Nile's history, tectonic events – including the formation of the Red Sea Hills and uplift and volcanism of the Ethiopian Plateau – appear to have had the strongest influence on the river's evolution.

Light refreshments will be available as usual, hope to see you there.

Time series clustering and class-based machine learning in predicting elastic properties of rocks: why, how, what, and so what

Shuvajit Bhattacharya, Ph.D., Bureau of Economic Geology, UT Austin

Multivariate time series clustering and class-based machine learning (ML) are relatively new concepts in geosciences; they have an immense potential to improve our models and provide more geologic insights than traditional baseline ML models. Seismic and wireline logs are a form of time series or depth series that share interdependence or conditional dependence with each other, depending on the rock type. Moreover, seismic and log data are highly redundant from an ML modeling perspective. We often do not consider these fundamental features of our datasets in ML models. This results in reduced explainability and troubleshooting of ML models and our models' failure when the boundary conditions change slightly. This talk will discuss the promises and challenges of semi-supervised time series clustering and class-based ML to solve these challenges. I will show an example of accurately and consistently predicting elastic properties of mudrocks using these concepts.

Biography: Dr. Bhattacharya is a researcher at the Bureau of Economic Geology, UT Austin. He is an applied geophysicist/petrophysicist by background. Prior to joining BEG, he worked with the University of Alaska Anchorage, Battelle, and other organizations in different roles, such as an assistant professor and petroleum geoscientist. He completed multiple projects for fossil fuel and geothermal energy exploration and carbon sequestration in the US, Australia, South Africa, and India. He has published over 50 technical articles in different journals and conferences.

To register, use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yKwFn9ZGR3e1ddp-G22zTQ

ASEG Victoria is pleased to announce the second of our autumn series of in-person branch events with another technical meeting night.  You are cordially invited to join us for a talk by Dr. Fabian Kohlmann (Managing Director, Lithodat Pty Ltd) on Tuesday May 25th from 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.

The Future of Cloud-based Spatial Geoscience Data and its Application in Exploration

Well managed, standardized data is vital for the resource industry as it currently undergoes an intense digitalization phase. As most available geoscientific datasets are usually bound by regional extends and have their own attributes and requirements, it is often challenging to merge all data into a consistent global framework which can then be used across boundaries without limits. Lithodat’s vision is to provide geoscientists with global geoscientific databases and built-in analytics to gain fast new insights about regions of interest. To achieve that goal, a team of experts extract, validate and integrate data in our unique cloud-hosted relational database.

Rather than storing data from many different projects in separate spreadsheets and folders, Lithodat’s consolidation of data opens the full potential that spatial geoscience data has to offer. Using the right tools means that spatial relationships can be analyzed on the fly, helping to solve scientific questions and industrial demands alike. For that purpose, we have developed LithoSurfer, our online platform for data viewing, analytics and extraction. LithoSurfer gives quick access to regions of interest or dive into the wealth of additional information (analytical details, lab information, literature etc.) for each datapoint. All data can be extracted in multiple formats ensuring that new techniques such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) can take full advantage of Lithodat's databases.

In this talk we demonstrate the data acquisition process starting in the field using our fully integrated LithoSurfer FieldApp, the range of data types captured, and tools developed to rapidly display spatial data information on LithoSurfer. The discussion also includes examples of the potential integration of new datasets within exploration workflows, and the development of new fully-integrated tools, such as on-the-fly paleogeographic reconstructions which lead to an improved understanding of tectonic events and changes in paleo-topography through time

Bio: After three years of Equinor sponsored post-doctoral work at Bergen University, Norway, Fabian joined Neftex Petroleum Consultants in 2013 to develop global paleo-digital elevation models and build a global thermochronology database for integration into plate modeling, basin modelling and gross depositional environment mapping workflows. After Neftex became part of Halliburton, he was put in charge of the thermochronology team and became part of Halliburton’s global Source-to-Sink project. Fabian left Halliburton in 2018 to join Lithodat Pty. Ltd., a new cloud-hosted geoscience data company based in Melbourne. Fabian holds a PhD degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Melbourne and a MSc degree in Geology and Paleontology from the Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich, Germany.

Note: Light refreshments will be served during the evening.

Please register your interest in attending this event by using the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/aseg-vic-technical-meeting-night-tickets-153403827979

The initial geophysics conference “Looking into Our World”, provided us with a platform to develop and learn from. As such, this year’s event will come under the banner of “Latin Geophysics Explore 2021” which better reflects nature of the conference since the science is not dictated by political boundaries but by geoscientific ones.

Building on from last year we wish to grow the event to include a half day training course to complement the speaker program maintaining a similar structure to last year.

A programme can be accessed here.

https://chilexploregroup.cl/en/latin-geophysics-explore-2021-en/

Title: Basin-wide and multi-scenario modeling of rock property and AVO feasibility volumes

Presenter: Dr. Per Avseth

Please see the Zoom link for the 18th May webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-9wBWxOITtOYopFbRpVYpA

Summary:

One of the key tasks within the field of geoscience is to obtain a better understanding of the subsurface rock properties using remote sensing techniques (e.g., seismic and CSEM) and/or selected modelling tools. In mature areas with many wells and good quality seismic data, a data-driven approach can be used to predict rock properties between wells. In areas with limited well control and/or complex geology, we still rely on models to understand expected changes in rock properties between/away from wells, even though the seismic data is of good quality. Integration of geology and geophysics is a key to optimally select, constrain, and calibrate rock physics models. Lack of well log data can make it challenging to quantify uncertainties, but a scenario-based modeling with alternative geological scenarios and sensitivity testing of key input parameters can help us to better understand and possibly reduce the uncertainties away from well control.  In this presentation, I will demonstrate how a scenario-based feasibility modelling of rock physics properties, constrained by local geological inputs (mineralogy, facies, temperature, burial history, etc.) can give valuable information, that can be utilized before new seismic data are acquired (e.g., to decide whether certain types of data like AVO will be beneficial or not), or they can be used to guide the quantitative seismic interpretation of existing seismic data. 

Bio:

Per Avseth is a geophysical advisor and CTO of Dig Science in Oslo, Norway, and a part-time researcher at the Dept. of Electronic Systems at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.  Per received his M.Sc. in Applied Petroleum Geosciences from NTNU in 1994, and his Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University, California, in 2000. Per worked as a research geophysicist at Norsk Hydro in Bergen, Norway (2001-2006), a consultant at Rock Physics Technology (2006-2008) and Odin Petroleum (2008-2012) in Bergen, and as a geophysical advisor at Tullow Oil in Oslo (2012-2016). He held a position as an adjunct professor in reservoir geophysics at the Dept. of Petroleum and Geoscience at NTNU from 2008-2020. Per was the SEG Honorary Lecturer for Europe in 2009. He is a co-author of the book Quantitative Seismic Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and has published extensively in the fields of rock physics and AVO analysis. His current research focuses on basin-scale rock physics and integration of basin modeling, sedimentology and rock physics.

The AGM of the ASEG Queensland Branch will be held on Tuesday 27 April at the XXXX Brewery in Milton from 1715.

QLD ASEG members interested in joining the branch committee should email james.alderman@riotinto.com before Friday 23 April.

Nominations are open for President, Secretary, Treasurer, Communications Representative and general committee.

For the technical talk, we’re pleased to welcome Peter Fullagar back to Brisbane. Peter will present the first of a two part talk on fast TEM inversion using conductive ellipsoids. More details on the talk can be found at the Eventbrite registration link.

Peter Fullagar - Fullagar Geophysics Pty Ltd

Beyond plates – fast TEM inversion using conductive ellipsoids

Part 1: Forward modelling

Interpreting TEM data in terms of conductive rectangular plates is effective in many situations. However, not all conductors are planar. Triaxial ellipsoid conductors are an attractive alternative: geometrically simple (corner-free), mathematically tractable at early and late time limits, and able to encompass shapes ranging from plates to elongate lenses to equi-dimensional pods. Accordingly a fast magnetostatics-based algorithm has been developed to compute ellipsoidal conductor responses in both resistive and inductive limits. Inversion of measured data then entails adjustment of ellipsoid parameters. The methodology is suitable for downhole, ground, or airborne TEM, either impulse or step response.

The event is free for members and $15 for non-members who are welcome to join prior to the meeting. Please register through Eventbrite here.

In this first of two presentations, the forward modelling algorithm is described and illustrated. 

Title: Shallow mantle convection beneath West Africa and source to sink at continental margins: A novel approach to reservoir prediction in offshore deep-water settings

Presenter: Dr Bhavik Harish Lodhia (UNSW)

Abstract:

Deep-water settings are prevalent in many of the world’s frontier basins. To better focus exploration spend in today’s challenging environment and predict reservoirs, a novel approach to close the loop between onshore denudation and offshore sediment deposition is required. Sedimentary flux measurements, regional subsidence patterns, tomographic models and simple isostatic calculations are combined to constrain the history of offshore solid sedimentary flux and sub-plate support of the Mauritanian Basin. We combine seismic reflection and well data along the West African margin with shear wave tomography and the uplift and magmatic history of the Cape Verde Rise to constrain thermal, spatial and temporal scales of upper mantle convection. Predictions of solid sedimentary flux to the Mauritanian Basin calculated by inversion of continental drainage are compared to observations in the Chinguetti field of the Mauritanian Basin.

Bio: Bhavik moved to Australia from the United Kingdom earlier this year and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Energy Technology and Geophysics at UNSW. Bhavik graduated with a PhD in Geology and Geophysics at Imperial College London in 2019 and completed a masters/bachelors degree in Earth Sciences at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford in 2014. His work has focused on basin dynamics, geodynamics, sediment source to sink and petroleum systems modelling.

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-_AXVmqGT5GGGUrJw-VODA

Attend in-person

Time:                    5:30 for 6pm start

Address:              Level 2, Club York (99 York St, Sydney. Room 'York 2')

Meeting registration:      https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2V6JM9F by Sunday 18th April - due to COVID restrictions we require a registration for in-person meetings. If you have trouble registering please email nswsecretary@aseg.org.au