Night School – Advances in Seismic Processing (Virtual Course)

Seismic acquisition and processing are fundamental in our understanding of the subsurface. This area of geophysics is as ever evolving at pace and the series of talks will provide an overview of the recent advances which should lead the industry to drilling better wells with improved data quality which in turn is reducing the risk of failure. The course will be a tour through streamer acquisition and processing, then onto Ocean Bottom seismic, then onto Land, Site survey and finally the emergence of DAS-VSPs. Throughout the course we will talk about the applicability of these techniques to non-hydrocarbon activities such as geothermal, CCUS and wind.

Session 1:  Marine streamer acquisition
Facilitator: Daniel Davies
Date: Monday 01 November 2021
6:00pm – 8:00pm

The evolution of marine seismic technologies in the last 10 years

• A review of broadband towed streamer offerings
• The impact of illumination and the benefits of multi-azimuth and wide azimuth acquisition
• The impact of data density on the quality of seismic images
• Advances in marine seismic sources in terms of density, control and bandwidth

Session 2: Towed Streamer processing
Facilitator: Daniel Davies
Date: Thursday 04 November 2021
6:00pm – 8:00pm

A tour through a “standard” marine processing flow focusing on specific area of development

• Deghosting
• Demultiple beyond decon and SRME
• Regularisation from simple trace binning to multi-dimensional guided interpolation
• Velocity model building from tomography to high frequency FWI
• Migration from Kirchhoff to RTM and beyond
• Emerging practices in post migration processing

Session 3: The rise of Ocean bottom seismic
Facilitator: Daniel Davies
Date: Monday 08 November 2021
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Walking through the history of Ocean Bottom seismic, from 1936 to today.

• Historic view of Ocean Bottom seismic
• Building of a track record of successful application which led to significant industry uptake in mid-2010’s
• Key enablers such as node count and simultaneous sources
• Why data density matters
• An overview of OBN Processing from drifting clocks to fracture estimation and PS processing

Session 4 – 4D, Land, Site survey and DAS/VSPs
Facilitator: Daniel Davies
Date: Thursday 11 November 2021
6:00pm – 8:00pm

• Starting with some basic 4D tools moving to non-standard approaches and ending with 4D PS and mixed acquisition 4D examples
• The complexities of land acquisition & processing and discussing the advantages of dense acquisition geometries
• Taking reservoir acquisition & processing concepts into the shallow hazards arena for both Oil & Gas and renewables sectors
• Emergence of Distributed Acoustic Sensors (DAS) from production monitoring to providing subsurface images

Who should attend?

The primary audience is those who work the subsurface and use seismic on a regular or semi-regular basis. However, specialist will also get valuable insight into some new technologies.

To access member-only events or to benefit from the reduced member fees please visit https://www.ges-gb.org.uk/membership/ to find out how to become a PESGB member.

Please read our Registration Terms and Conditions before completing your purchase.

Dan Davies is currently a seismic processing specialist with bp. He gained a Batchelors degree in Geophysics & Planetary Physics at the University of Newcastle and a Master’s degree from the University of Durham. Dan started his career with CGG in 1998 and focused on 4D processing. After spells in London and Paris he moved to Aberdeen for 1-2 years and has never left. He joined bp in 2006 and his career continued to focus on 4D processing and increasingly the use of Ocean Bottom Seismic acquisition and processing and currently works project across the globe.