History of Seismic In The Gulf of Mexico Glenn Morton, Paul Schlirf, Mark Chang, Victor Kriechbaum Thanks to all the Contractors who contributed to this talk: WesternGeco, PGS, Veritas, Fugro, John Chance, Ensoco, Kerr-McGee

The Primitive Start of Geophysics

The First Geophone Built by Gray, Ewing and Milne in Tokyo 1880

Early History 1846 Irish scientist Robert Mallet suggested that rocks might have different velocities of sound. 1851 Robert Mallet carried out field experiments, measuring  velocities in granite and loose sand 1876 U. S. General H. L. Abbot measured velocity of sound in rocks with 50,000 pounds of dynamite at Hallets Point, New York 1889 Fouque and Levy use photography to record seismic data

Early History 1912 Submarine Signal Corp. Used sound in water to send Morse Code to ships 20 words per minute—80 km range

Geophysicists have No Credibility 1914 Capt. Conrad Schlumberger uses sound to locate Big Bertha, the German artillery piece

Seismic Reflection Method 1920 John Evans Bevan Whitney patent seismic reflection method 1921 Seismic reflection work by Geological Engineering Co.

Seismic Companies Organize 1923 Seismos Gesellschaft organized. Does refraction work in Mexico 1924 Gulf Oil uses Seismos Gesellschaft to locate Orchard Dome. 1925 Amerada forms Geophysical Research Corp formed for using reflection method. Contracts with rest of Industry. Everette DeGolyer is President of Amerada 1930 SGRM formed—became part of CGG 1930 Amerada President restricts Geophysical Research Corp for internal use. DeGolyer is Chairman. DeGolyer and friends secretly start GSI. 1931 Seismograph Service Corp formed 1933 Western Geophysical seismic exploration company formed 1936 Prakla formed—Later Prakla-Seismos

De Golyer Companies Founded GSI Felmont Corporation Core Labs DeGolyer and McNaughton Riches aren’t everything—After 7 years of suffering from aplastic anemia, he took his own life Dec 14, 1956

State of the Industry 1929 only 4 land seismic crews 1929 first book on Geophysical Methods of Prospecting by C. A. Heiland

Acquisition 1932 first use of filters to eliminate record noise Beginning of seismic processing 1933 multiple geophones per group for noise.

Recording 1936 first recording system by Frank Rieber 1952 analog magnetic recording 1955 Moveable magnetic heads allow static and dynamic corrections to seismic data

First GOM Seismic 1937 Western Geophysical begins marine survey operations in Gulf Creole Field, 1938 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from Louisiana coast in 4.2 m (14 ft) of water from a 100 x 300 ft drilling platform secured to a foundation of timber piles. Picture Courtesy WesternGeco

Acquisition 1938 Shell takes seismic crew 4 miles offshore into 65 feet of water 1944 Extensive Marine operations began

Seismic Crew Pay 1939

Finding Costs Per Barrel 1940

In 1970 200 land and 15 marine crews In 1937 250 seismic crews in US. In 1946 350 crews mostly land In 1952 650 crews mostly land In 1970 200 land and 15 marine crews In 1981 690 land and 50 marine crews In 2004 197 land and marine crews Lowest level since 1930’s

1942 First Female Computer (Geophysicist)

Navigation 1946 used towers onshore to survey the boat position visually. 1946 waterspout from dynamite surveyed from platforms to know shotpoint location

Bates Peacock and the Balloon 1947 Shoran

Navigation 1950’s SSC developed Lorac with range of 100 miles accuracy of 5 m. Today we have GPS with accuracies of 1 m

Navigation Courtesy EnSoCo

Acquisition 1950 CDP methods patent issued 1956 Made Seismic look like a geologic cross-section

Processing 1954 deconvolution for multiple suppression 1958 synthetic seismograms Logs Synthetic Real Seismic

Marine Operations Balloon Navigation

Marine Operations Early Cable

Marine Operations Dynamite thrown overboard

Operations Dynamite was Source of Choice But Not for the Fish

Operations

High Tech Seismic—1950s style

Processing 1955 Western Geophysical pioneers large-scale analog data processing 1958 digital data recording

Operations 1965 Airgun seismic source Boats used to load 500,000 pounds of TNT Scared the harbormaster The Fish were pleased, not to mention the Fishermen

Processing ~1970 Digital Migration Bowtie Unmigrated Migrated

Interpretation 1972 bright spot technology

3D Seismic 1974 VSP 1976 first 3D seismic survey Done by both Western and GSI Picture courtesy Veritas

Acquisition 3D Seismic 1976 first use of multiple seismic streamers 1989 3D time lapse seismic Water flow through The Reservoir

Acquisition 1990 3D becomes cheap enough for most to get some. 1995 vertical cable. Picture from PGS

Processing/Computers 1958 first digital recordings 1958 first digital seismic processing 1978 2-D post-stack depth migration 1985 3-D post-stack depth migration

Computers

Acquisition 4C 1985 AVO first used 1994 anisotropic processing used. 1995 first 4C collected in Gulf http://www.pgs.com/geophysical/seafloor/history/casestudies/dbaFile4570.html

Acquisition 20 streamers per boat today

Where are we going? No one can predict but the trends say: Permanently installed seismic over fields Downhole seismic sensors (in casing?) More 4D; Limited 4C Multiazumuthal shooting (for illumination) Longer cables, deeper recording Denser coverage – 6.25 m per CDP-single sensor

1996 Vintage data 211/19-3 Murchison 3d Comparison 2.7 2.8 Comparison of original data with that of the single sensor spectrally whitened data. 2.8 E R B Morton et al, Petex, 2002

2001 Single-sensor 211/19-3 Murchison 3d Comparison 2.7 2.8 T N This is the same location with single sensor acquistion and spectral whitening it is two extremes, but the spectral whitening works. Note the great well tie 2.8 E R B Morton et al, Petex 2002

Where are we going? Multicomponent simultaneously inverted Attribute volumes by the bucket load (invest in companies that make disk drives) Computers with large addressable memories

Seismic, Medicine and Landmen Doctors have transferred many of the Seismic techniques to imaging the human body Imaging technology has led to major discoveries on the physiology of Landmen Landmen have enlarged Hunger Center which helps them know where good Restaurants are.

The End