News/Events

  • Online Tech Lunch: High Resolution Beam Tomography for Velocity Model Building – September 23rd, 2020 September 21, 2020

    Beam Tomography (BT) is a novel high resolution, wide azimuth migration velocity analysis tool using Beam Migration. The high resolution updates are comparable to FWI results, with three orders of magnitude more efficiency. A 2000 sq km velocity model can be updated using 400 CPUs in less than 5 minutes. The Beam Tomography uses Beam Migration to directly output the velocity update matrix with a very high number (2000-10,000) of velocity update values at each (x,y,z) analysis point. This methodology bypasses the time consuming steps required for traditional tomography, including preparing the gathers for semblance analysis, semblance picking and back-projection picks QC. The method enables a very rapid estimation of the depth or time delays along each ray that can be used to produce a high quality alignment of the common-image angle or offset gathers. In addition, Beam Tomography output contains image point azimuth information and this allows the tomographic update to go beyond the current limitation of limited wide azimuth velocity updates. In summary, Beam Tomography allows for faster turnaround time for large 3-D seismic projects and at the same time increases the accuracy of the velocity model by using wide azimuth information that is typically unavailable in traditional tomography.

    Register for this online event at the GSH website here >

  • Beam Technology and Beam Tomography – The Curmudgeon’s Column September 21, 2020

    In my classification, beam migrations are a subset of smart migrations, a class of algorithms that uses information in the prestack input data to guide the migration operator, in contrast with brute force migrations (or dumb migrations) such as Kirchhoff and RTM that make the assumption that every point in the subsurface is a diffractor, do not use the stack information available, and make no a priori assumptions about the migrated image structure. Some hybrid algorithms that use the dips from the stack to constrain the aperture do not fit neatly in my classification, but the helicopter view still stands. One early and successful commercial implementation of a smart migration class algorithm is FBM developed by Sherwood at Applied Geophysical Services. The speed of FBM is achieved in two steps:
    1) A factor of 5 to 10 in speedup is achieved using beam forming, or beam decomposition of the input data, where the number of input data is reduced by a factor of 5 to 10.
    2) A factor of 10 to 100 in speedup is obtained by spreading each input trace or beam over a beam instead of a full aperture volume.

    Read the full article on Mihai’s blog here >
    or
    Read the full article on the SEG Library here >

  • Mihai Popovici on the state of the industry November 30, 2018

    On the walls of our Houston Z-Terra office, we have a lot of movie posters.  It’s a tradition that started at 3DGeo when our office was across the road from Silicon Graphics, which made computers used for computer generated imagery and which had a lot of movie posters on its walls.  We visited Silicon Graphics often for support.  We kept the tradition at Z-Terra, and each poster comes from somebody’s favorite movies list.  One of the posters is from Batman Begins and includes a quote from the movie: “Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” We are starting to pick ourselves up as an industry.

    Read the full article here >

  • TLE article on the President’s Page on the Future of our Industry May 21, 2018

     We are working in the largest industry in the world by revenue and market capitalization.  The top 4 oil and gas companies ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and BP have a market capitalization of about $1 trillion and annual revenues in the same range.  Yet these 4 companies represent only 18% of the total market, with the rest of 82% distributed among many National Oil Companies (NOC) like Saudi Aramco, Petronas, Petrobras, Pemex, Statoil, Sonangol, Ecopetrol, etc.  The initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco in 2018 will create a company with a market capitalization in the $1-2 trillion range, the largest IPO in history, making Silicon Valley unicorns look like tiny blips in the market.  This enormous value and value creation industry will not disappear overnight and be replaced by renewables and electric cars, as the media would like you to think.

    Read the full article here: http://www.alexanderbrad.com/2017/12/the-future-of-our-industry/

  • Houston Racquet Club Oil and Gas Society Speaker Series on Thursday, May 18th 2017 May 12, 2017

    Starting Start-ups: Mistakes & Lessons Along the Road

    Mihai Popovici Speaker Series 2 - 5.18.17Please join us for the Houston Racquet Club Oil and Gas Society Speaker Series on Thursday, May 18th at 6:00 pm.

    We always have a crowd to hear our speakers, so please sign up as soon as possible so we can plan accordingly.

    RSVP to Cristina at 713-464-4811 Ext. 125 or hrcogs@houstonracquetclub.com by Friday, May 12.

    Dr. Mihai Popovici

    Alexander Mihai Popovici is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Z-Terra Inc., a provider of state-of-the-art geophysical and geological technology, services and software for the upstream oil and gas industry. He holds Ph.D. (1995) and M.Sc. (1991) degrees in geophysics from Stanford University, and an equivalent B.S. (1985) in geophysical and geological engineering from University of Bucharest, Romania. He escaped from Romania in 1986 and spent a year in a refugee camp in Austria. Dr. Popovici was co-founder and CEO of 3DGeo Inc. Dr. Popovici’s industry experience includes work in the seismic processing research department for Halliburton Geophysical Services in Dallas and Houston, and EM acquisition and processing in Romania. From 1987 to 1983, he was employed at Guzik Technical as a staff engineer for magnetic recording and software development.

    He has nine patents in the field, over 100 publications in conference proceedings, books, trade journals, and research reports and has given numerous invited talks at conferences, geophysical associations, and geophysical workshops. He has been a member of the SEG Research Committee, served as Associate Editor (Seismic Migration) for Geophysics, and is past Chairman and founding board member of Geoscientists Without Borders, an SEG Foundation program that funds humanitarian applications of geophysics around the world. Currently he serves on the SEG Foundation Development Board and is the 2017 SEG Houston Technical Program Chairman.

    Popovici is active in the community; he was president of Casa Romana, a non-profit organization serving Americans of Romanian origin living in the Bay Area. He was elected to this position in 1997 and built the largest Romanian community center and church on the West Coast. Casa Romana was dedicated in 1998 by the president of Romania Emil Constantinescu. At present he is Honorary Consul of Romania in Houston.

    Dr. Popovici and his wife, Catherine, have four sons and one daughter. Together with Catherine, he established an SEG scholarship endowment fund that provides scholarships to students. He is a scuba diving instructor, active fencer, and played paintball with one of the first established pro teams. Today, he mostly plays with his kids, practices karate, rock climbs, hunts, and is working on his private pilot license.