When we find the right tools or equipment, we make genuine progress.  If we're hampered by a "squirrel cage" environment, we get some exercise -- but genuine forward progress suffers.



When drilling decisions are concerned, we need tools that reduce risk.

Overcoming Challenges in Seismic Interpretation

Both pre-stack and post-stack data contain useful information. But it must be processed in an intelligent way to create visuals and graphics that can become meaningful to humans--we need to call attention to the more important information.  If the less important gets the emphasis, critical decisions, based on the wrong facts, are executed to the possible confusion, embarrassment, or injury of those involved (Note that the small print on the sign says, "Also, the bridge is out ahead!").

Where does Seismic Insight, Inc. fit into all of this?

Our learning software is designed to handle massive amounts of incoming information, then isolate and learn from patterns in wave samples that are associated with meaningful subsurface properties or events.  The event could be an oil well, a gas well, a dry hole, a particular rock type, or an area of high or low porosity, to name a few possibilities.  Or, if we are looking for predictions about production output, the events may be a well with a high volume output, or one with a low output. 

Each of these example events are likely to be associated with seismic characteristics that our software can learn and then recognize.  A group of these characteristics becomes a signature.   Once our software can recognize a signature, it can look at "unfamiliar" seismic traces to locate additional places where such signatures occur and make predictions about discovery possibilities.  These predictions address questions like "Which areas are most likely to be hydrocarbon bearing?" Or, "Where are the areas of highest porosity?" The clearer the signs, the better the decisions.

Now, if these predictive methods can generate visual "maps" that relate to human experience--and if those maps are validated at high confidence levels, they become tools of significant worth to those making high stake decisions.

To use another analogy, we all have some knowledge of our alphabet -- we can even spell a few words.  When we group the letters in special ways, they have meaning for us in the form of words, which in turn paint "word pictures" for us.  But most people would not have thought of using letters to describe a moving image in this particular way (see image to your right).  We normally don't group alphabet letters in this way to describe a moving being -- we would do it in story form.  Yet, if we were to try to describe in story form, what we are experiencing with the image, the listener is not going to get the same feeling that we have.

When someone is trying to use the alphabet in a different way to convey a new concept they understand, we may not "get it" until the visual is right.  When the visual is right, it's so much easier to grasp the concept -- the way things are grouped has great relevance for each of us.

Interpretation of 3D seismic can be much like that.  One of the reasons our technology is so versatile is because the software can find hidden relationships between pieces of information that had not previously been "put together" or "seen together."   Our software combines production data with 3D seismic data in a unique way to produce a meaningful visual interpretation of a subsurface zone of interest. It can glean information from either pre-stack or post-stack data.   With such a tool that combines and sorts through so much information, the critical elements involved in important decision-making can be made much more obvious.

Next: Seismic Insight's Event Resolution Imaging