A long time since my last post.
Quite a lot has happened in the industry. Of course the collapse of the oil price has affected all of us.
The oil companies seem to be in panic mode and have cut projects.
All a bit silly really, we all know the price of oil will rebound, and probably to higher levels than we have ever seen. Now would be a good time to invest past profits into new exploration projects and more importantly research and training of the next generation.
Although not an immediate priority, tight oil in small reservoirs will become very important in years to come. Identifying and testing these structures now would give any oil company that does, a competitive advantage when current fields are either depleted, or due to political or environmental reasons inaccessible.
Not going to happen of course, these days accountants control everything, not real people. The damage accountants have done to the world over the last 40 years or so is unforgivable. And worst of all there is no accounting for the actions of accountants – pun intended. They get away with destroying lives, economies and countries and are never brought to task. Accounting should be considered a crime against humanity and all accountants jailed or preferably, executed. At least they could be useful as fertiliser. They aren’t much different to dogs really – see here:
http://www.seismatters.com/wordpress/?p=34
But enough of that.
Along with everyone else, my work activities have been somewhat curtailed, but not stopped.
I have had a couple of trips back to Oman for PDO, and very interesting they were.
My focus was mostly on tests of new techniques that could potentially increase daily production 4 or 5 fold. There are more tests planned in a little while that I will likely be involved with. These have a slightly different focus, but are still source related.
I am still not a believer in very low frequency vibroseis sweeps, but that may change with new equipment. For low frequency acquisition to be viable, it needs to be approached from both the source and the receiver side. There are practical limits on the size of vibrators that we are reaching now – and very low frequencies, demand big vibrators. So we must look at the receiver side. Sercel released the SG5 a year or so ago – a 5Hz high sensitivity geophone, but it has had limited uptake mainly because they try to push it as being a single element replacement for 6 conventional elements. My evaluation of tests indicates that this is not the case. The true benefit of the SG5 will not be seen until 3 or 4 are connected in series. Four looked very, very good (amazingly good – almost a quantum leap as we so often hear in the media) as we could also create an areal array – even a small array is hugely beneficial in attenuating ambient noise. That, and sensitivity are two things that the theory people always seem to overlook. Single element sensors sound very nice, but if you don’t get signal into the digitiser, then all we are doing is sign bit summing and relying (requiring) huge fold to produce anything at all. Why bother with a high fidelity recording system in this case?
MEMS technology is still not there despite the various manufacturer’s claims. And Sercel’s approach of integrating it into the DSU which in turn is integrated into the cable is not good. It creates coupling issues due to its size. The few people who read this will know I am not a fan of IO electronics (I like some of their vibs though), but one of the few things they got right with their Vectorseis, was to separate the sensor from the cable and digitiser. It still doesn’t make me a fan, but they did get one thing right.
My time off has been good. Recently I did a trip around the north East of Thailand with an old seismic friend.
We covered, Korat, Khon Kaen, Udon, Nong Kai, Nakhon Phanom, Mukdahan and Surin, and also made a special trip to Phanom Rung.
My interest was mainly the Khmer ruins along the way, of which there are many – some pictures here:
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=90
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=91
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=95
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=93
And the root page here:
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/index.php?cat=14&page=2
It was a good trip. I had never seen a lot of the country we covered.
One spot that deserves special mention is the Ho Kham Resort on the way east.
We had continued a bit further that we should have that day, it was getting dark and started raining, so we were prepared to stop anywhere for the night. Ho Kham resort appeared just at the right time, so we drove in and asked if they had a couple of rooms available which they did. Then we asked about food, they said they weren’t really open, but they could cook us some fried rice.
How about a beer or two? No problem.
And we got coffee and toast in the morning. All for 800 Baht all up for 2 rooms right on the river + food and beer, and with a smile despite them not even being properly open for customers. It was old style Thai hospitality, and quite refreshing. Google Earth Coords: 18.441169, 103.423328
Here are pictures of the river from the resort.
http://seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=95
I’m going up to Chiang Mai in a couple of days to play some golf.
When I get back, will maybe start a rewrite of some of my Vib QC stuff.
That should keep me occupied until the next job.