Blueback Reservoir AS and Earthworks E&R announce the release of the Earthworks Seismic Inversion Petrel plug-in software

30 October 2010—The Earthworks Seismic Inversion plug-in for Petrel (ESI) is seismic inversion software enabling use of impedance data in the reservoir modeling workflow. The plug-in is fully integrated with Petrel using Petrel native data objects, and makes seismic inversion accessible to the Petrel user community.

The ESI Petrel plug-in is a joint development between Earthworks and Blueback Reservoir. ESI provides a complete set of deterministic and stochastic inversion algorithms for pre- and post-stack seismic inversion, providing a toolkit for various inversion workflows and scenarios.

The new Petrel plug-in product is commercially available and is ready for download from the Schlumberger Ocean Store. A free trial version is available for a limited time period.

dGB Earth Sciences donates software to Pitt-Bradford Petroleum Technology Program

3 November 2010—dGB Earth Sciences donated six commercial licenses for the plugins of its OpendTect software worth to the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford’s Petroleum Technology program.
 
Jamal Assad, visiting professor of petroleum technology, secured the software. In addition to the software, students will also have access to dGB’s Open Seismic Repository, which contains seismic data, interpreted horizons and well data from a number of global locations.
 
The software works by taking seismic and geological data and turning it into a three-dimensional representation that can be used to pinpoint the location of oil or gas and the best, most efficient way to reach and extract it.
 
Assad hopes that the OpendTect acquisition will be the first tool to make Pitt-Bradford a technology center for petroleum research and teaching.
 
Pitt-Bradford is the first university in Pennsylvania to receive academic licenses from dGB. In Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the in the Americas, about 200 universities have already incorporated OpendTect into their teaching and research with more than 1000 commercial licenses.

WHOI Receives Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant for oceanography imaging informatics

9 November 2010—The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has received a grant of more than US $2 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for work in imaging informatics in oceanography.

The WHOI study-to be done in collaboration with the Tetherless World Constellation group at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)—is an interdisciplinary project that will develop new tools for ocean scientists who work with underwater imagery.

Fugro Airborne Surveys completes airborne surveys for Eni Gabon

10 November 2010—Fugro Airborne Surveys has completed airborne geophysical data acquisition surveys on six onshore and offshore licenses for Eni Gabon in West Africa. 

The six licenses, with an overall surface area of more than 8000 km2, included D3 and D4, situated in the prolific north Gabonese basin in conventional waters; while the remaining four—E2, F3, F4 and F7—are situated in the onshore basin.

The contract consisted of acquiring airborne geophysical data using three different technologies: very high resolution Falcon airborne gravity gradiometry and helicopter electromagnetics were acquired on block F7; while conventional airborne gravity was acquired on blocks D3-D4 (offshore) and E2,F2,F3 (onshore).

The combination of these three airborne geophysical technologies was required to image a wide range of geological targets that could not be resolved with a single technology.

Data processing is partially complete and interpretation is now underway at Eni headquarters in Milan, Italy.