How the Saudi / shale oil battle should make us stop & think. (and I don’t mean about geo-politics). The shale production reality reminds us the Saudi oil was not formed in the sands. It got there by being squeezed out of shales over time. Fact #2 is that today’s techniques have only tapped a small portion of the oil and gas that exists in the “fracked”shale chunks. So the whole oil/gas exploration picture has changed, especially spread design. Where long spreads meant to favor deep targets seemed worth while, now they are largely a waste of money. Shallow prospects are now more topical. Recording problems are universally more difficult to correct in the upper section since muting restricts the number of traces that can be used to detect the problems. In much of today’s work we approach 2 seconds before all are available. Added to this factor, the problems are more severe. On the next slide I use pictures from previous shows for illustration.

The coherent noises in this section was so strong that it was condoling the display and I had to cut it out. To make the spread design point. Let’s say we want to improve above 1 sec. (where we can afford to drill) We can see heavy refractions, indicating a shallow critical angle crossing that has terminated the vertical flow of the downwave. We got rid of that noise as well as we could, but would like to look for inter-bed multiples. Click now and watch up here. The green line probably comes close to what we can trust, but the point is, to get at the probable interbed multiples the outside traces don’t help. This is one of the points I will expand on, given the interest in the main theme. If you missed that theme it is that the first thing that has to be done is to design the spreads to maximize benefits to shallow targets.. The joke is on me, of course, since I now believe I have the best approach to improving deeper data. In order to give you plenty of time to look at the wealth of detail shown by my new, non-linear before stack inversion I have employed the PowerPoint animation tricks where I run through the system explanation in a fixed position at the top. I am fond of the idea of separating important thoughts to pass on the flow I see in my mind. In the process of making the system truly time variant, I once again ran into the problem of limited traces early on. Having been there multiple times, I am absolutely convinced that a drastic tightening of the spread would unlock a number of exciting shallow prospects, and this detailed case tipped me over the edge. The statistical value of extra members is enormous. Of course if any company would see fit to run some tests, I would continue my processing at no charge. Now is the time to be doing this type of work, especially as it is designed to bring processing and drilling costs down to an absolute minimum. In any case, take your time on the next slide, trying to imagine how good we could get the shallow stuff given enough traces to work with. I will continue to add pertinent topics as time goes on, Suggestions would be enormously helpful.

Probing the question of “how good can seismic get? I ask you to spend a good amount of time just looking at the amazing detail this section shows. When you click, I will circle a couple of areas of interest that did not show up before this run. Then click again to continue. It is imperative that you stop here and pay attention. As I,ve said this detail was not visible till now. The odds are structures exist in the upper section we’ve never seen, just waiting for us to shorten spreads so our inversion and noise removal software can work properly.