We are preparing an exciting agenda facilitated by distinguished speakers and lively discussion, focusing specifically on geophysical topics that will be critical to the success of subsalt exploration and development projects.

A significant proportion of accessible hydrocarbon reserves today are thought to be in salt provinces where, historically, exploration and production has proved difficult. Five years ago, a workshop was held at the Colorado School of Mines to focus the R&D community on the problems of subsalt imaging where the salt came out a clear winner! A year later, in Snowbird’s SRW, there were some hints of light: results from early wide-azimuth acquisitions seemed promising, RTM was being talked about, and a number of ideas for subsalt velocity analysis were proposed.  Since then, propelled by a massive spike in the price of oil, the salt provinces of the Gulf of Mexico have been carpeted with WAZ (several times over in places) and RTM has become everybody’s favorite imaging algorithm.

Drilling subsalt remains a risky and costly activity, proprietary WAZ acquisition is expensive and likely to remain so, some aspects of processing have not kept pace with the advances in acquisition, and it seems that WAZ + RTM is not an imaging panacea, with some subsalt images that are still less than adequate for E&P purposes.

In this workshop we will review advances in subsalt imaging and analysis of the last half-decade, issues pertaining to these advances, and emerging techniques that address these issues.

I hope to see you all in Lake Tahoe!

Best Regards, Bin Wang and the 2010 SEG Summer Research Workshop Organizing Committee

Click here to get registration, workshop, and visa details and create your invitation letter.

Organizing committee

Bin Wang, Chair, TGS
Dimitri Bevc, FusionGeo
Paul Williamson, Total
Graham Winbow, ExxonMobil
Ricardo Rosa, Petrobras
Biondo Biondi, Stanford U
Ian Jones, ION-GXT
Jacques Leveille

SEG meeting planner

Amy Watson