1. 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

2. The Primitive Start of Geophysics

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

4. 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

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

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

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

8. 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

9. 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

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

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

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

13. First GOM Seismic
1937 Western Geophysical begins marine survey operations in Gulf
Creole Field, 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

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

15. Seismic Crew Pay 1939

16. Finding Costs Per Barrel 1940

17. In 1970 200 land and 15 marine crews
In seismic crews in US.
In crews mostly land
In crews mostly land
In land and 15 marine crews
In land and 50 marine crews
In land and marine crews
Lowest level since 1930’s

18. 1942 First Female Computer (Geophysicist)

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

20. Bates Peacock and the Balloon
1947 Shoran

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

22. Navigation
Courtesy EnSoCo

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

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

25. Marine Operations
Balloon Navigation

26. Marine Operations
Early Cable

27. Marine Operations
Dynamite thrown overboard

28. Operations
Dynamite was Source of Choice
But Not for the Fish

29. Operations

30. High Tech Seismic—1950s style

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

32. 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

33. Processing
~1970 Digital Migration
Bowtie
Unmigrated
Migrated

34. Interpretation
1972 bright spot technology

35. 3D Seismic 1974 VSP 1976 first 3D seismic survey
Done by both Western and GSI
Picture courtesy Veritas

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

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

38. Processing/Computers
1958 first digital recordings
1958 first digital seismic processing
D post-stack depth migration
D post-stack depth migration

39. Computers

40. Acquisition 4C 1985 AVO first used 1994 anisotropic processing used.
1995 first 4C collected in Gulf

41. Acquisition
20 streamers per boat today

42. 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

43. 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

44. 2001 Single-sensor 211/19-3 Murchison 3d Comparison 2.7 2.8T 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

45. 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

46. 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.

47. The End