HOUSTON–In 2000, shale gas represented only 1 percent of U.S. natural gas supplies. Today, it is 30 percent and that percentage keeps increasing. The technology to drill and fracture shale formations
is being exported to the rest of the world, increasing national oil and gas reserves in many other countries.

The thickness of shale formations is often only a few hundred feet, so new, high-resolution echnologies are needed to visualize the structure and the natural fracture distribution and orientation in these thin shale layers. High-resolution imaging of small-scale fractures in shale reservoirs has the potential to improve production and recovery efficiency, reduce field development costs, and decrease the environmental impact of developing the field by using fewer wells to optimally produce the reservoir.

Diffraction imaging (DI) is a novel technology that uses diffractions to image with super-resolution small subsurface elements that produce diffractions such as small-scale faults and fractures. Since diffractors are, by definition, smaller than the wavelength of seismic waves, diffraction imaging provides super-resolution information, which consists of image details that are beyond the classical Rayleigh limit (the minimum resolvable detail) of half a seismic wavelength.

FIGURE 1A. Specular Reflection and Diffraction Imaging Comparison

FIGURE 1B. Resolution of Kirchhoff Migration (left) versus Diffraction Imaging (right)

Diffraction imaging can be used to complement the structural images produced by conventional processing by generating an additional image volume of high-resolution unconformities. By identifying the areas with increased natural fracture density, reservoir engineers can design an optimal well placement program that targets the sweet spots and areas with increased production, while minimizing the total number of wells used for a prospective area.   Continue Reading →

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Z-Terra, a provider of depth imaging software solutions and services to the upstream oil and gas industry, has announced Julian Ceha as its new President Europe, Africa and Middle East. Julian Ceha, a seasoned executive with more than 25 years in management and operations experience, will be responsible for developing the Europe, Africa and Middle East business for Z-Terra, and grow the Z-Terra group in The Hague, Netherlands.

“We are delighted to have Julian Ceha join the Z-Terra team,” said Dr. Alexander Mihai Popovici, Chairman and CEO. “His extensive experience in Europe, Africa and Middle East- with a particular knowledge base of operation, technology and management – will allow us to continue to grow our business inside and outside of the U.S.”

Julian Ceha joins Z-Terra after working as Energy Consultant (Advisor, Investor) for the oil and gas industry in The Hague. He has more than 25 years of technology and operations experience in the oilfield services industry. His global experience and international contacts have been built over many years working internationally in senior positions for Schlumberger, the world leading Oilfield Service Company.   

He served as Vice President Land Acquisition and Data Processing for WesternGeco (a Schlumberger company), and has also taken on senior corporate roles as Director HR WesternGeco worldwide, based in the UK. Mr. Ceha also served as Geo-Market Manager in New Delhi, India for Schlumberger, managing the Oilfield Services in the region. He has lived and worked in Russia, India, Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, West Africa and most recently The Hague, Netherlands. Mr. Ceha joined Schlumberger as a Field Seismologist in 1987.

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Dr. Tijmen Jan Moser

Technical Advisor

Dr. Tijmen Jan Moser has a Ph.D. from Utrecht University and has worked as a geophysical consultant for a number of companies and institutes (Amoco, IFP, Karlsruhe University, Bergen University, Norsk Hydro, Geophysical Institute of Israel, Fugro-Jason, Horizon Energy Partners). For the last few years he has been working as an independent geophysical consultant. His main interests include seismic imaging, asymptotic methods and diffractions, where he has authored many influential papers on diffraction imaging.

Dr. Moser received the Loránd Eötvös Award from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) in 2006, together with Evgeny Landa and Sergey Fomel for their Geophysical Prospecting paper “Path-integral seismic imaging”, and in 2009 for his First Break article, “Validating the velocity model: the Hamburg score.” He is Editor-in-Chief of Geophysical Prospecting, member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and Mathematical Association of America, and Honorary Member of the EAGE.

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Dr. Paul Sava

Technical Advisor

Dr. Sava is an Assistant Professor of Geophysics and a member of the Center for Wave Phenomena at Colorado School of Mines. He holds an Engineering degree in Geophysics (1995) from the University of Bucharest, a M.Sc. (1998) and a Ph.D. (2004) in Geophysics from Stanford University where he was a member of the Stanford Exploration Project. His main research interests are in wavefield seismic imaging, stochastic imaging and inversion, computational methods for wave propagation, numeric optimization and high performance computing.

He is a recipient of a Stanford Graduate Fellowship (1997-2000) from Stanford University and of a Jackson Young Scientist Fellowship (2006-2007) from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a recipient of three Awards of Merit for best student presentations at the SEG conventions (1999, 2001 and 2004) and of a Honorable Mention in the category Best Paper in Geophysics (2003) for Angle-domain common-image gathers by wavefield continuation methods, co-authored by Sergey Fomel. The Society of Exploration Geophysicists recognized him in 2007 with the Reginald Fessenden Award for his work on wave-equation angle-domain imaging.

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Dr. Sergey Fomel

Technical Advisor

Dr. Fomel is an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Geological Sciences and also works in the Bureau of Economic Geology. He received a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University in 2001 and worked previously at the Russian Institute of Geophysics, Schlumberger Geco-Prakla, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Dr. Fomel received the J. Clarence Karcher Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 2001 and the Best Poster Presentation Award from SEG in 2007. He also shared the Honorable Mention Award from SEG with Paul Sava in 2004 for their Geophysics paper “Angle-domain common-image gathers by wavefield continuation methods” and the Lorand Eotvos Award from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) with Evgeny Landa and Tijmen-Jan Moser in 2007 for their Geophysical Prospecting paper “Path-integral seismic imaging.”

Dr. Fomel serves as an Associate Editor of Geophysics and devotes part of his time to developing “Madagascar”, an open-source software package for geophysical data analysis.

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