Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Public 3D Seismic Interpretation Workshop

I will be teaching this a 3D seismic interpretation workshop in Fayetteville based on the (free) OpendTect software that runs native on windows, mac, or linux.  We will be using Geoscience Department PC computers, but you can also run it on a laptop! Hope you can join us.  On Monday, I will also be chairing a special session on the Mississippian.  

Register for 3D workshop here.

Interpretation of 3D Seismic Data with Open Source (free) Software. 
Sunday, 16 March, 2014. US$100. Max: 25
Christopher Liner, University of Arkansas.
This one-day short course — designed for those with a general understanding of 3D seismic data — provides an introduction to the free OpendTect seismic interpretation system. The principle objectives for participants are to understand the overall system and support documents, data navigation, display, fundamentals of horizon tracking, and geobody extraction. Each participant is encouraged to bring a USB stick (8GB or larger) to take project results home for further self-study.


We will be learning opendtect using this data set.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Outcrop work today

Just wanted to hit the outcrop today and test out the new camera and deep-resolution montage techniques.  I've switched to robust open source OS X software (Hugin) for the montage generation from overlapping photographs.  I shot a place on highway 412 near Huntsville that has Mississsippian  Hindesville and Fayetteville Shale.  Maybe 60 feet of vertical section, but spread across a quarter mile of road cut. Here is a sample photo of festoon cross bedding in the Hindesville.


Each shot from the Nikon D610 is big; about 10Mb and 5400x3650 pixels. I worked parallel to the outcrop on the other side of the highway to get 61 overlapping shots.  But it was a windy, sunny day.  Wind makes it hard to get full resolution because of camera shake.  Full sun gives problems with contrast variations when clouds blow by, etc.  Still on the learning curve. 

One shot I did get was my 1973 Toyota Land Cruiser (The Big Chigg) with a fresh wax job in a nice setting.




Friday, January 10, 2014

3DSE Jan 2014

3D Seismic Exploration class

The class finished this morning with 18 prospect presentations.  In just one week the students got up to speed from basically no knowledge of 3D seismic interpretation, IHS/Kingdom software, or prospect generation. It was intense (8 hours per day) with hard deadlines that required serious time management. After all prospects are presented, a hidden ballot decides the top 3, then a runoff vote.  Top 3 prospectors were Michael Kumbalek, Matthew Cope, and Brock Langford.  The runoff came up tied between Kumbalek and Cope, so a roll of the dice decided the issue.  Best Prospect winner Michael Kumbalek received a copy of 52 Things You Should Know About Geophysics, inscribed by the instructor.  Mr. Kumbalek is on a roll, he also won best presentation in my petroleum geophysics class in fall semester 2013!

Top overall score in 3DSE was Daniel Otto.

Special thanks to Steve Milligan for serving as external advisor, IHS for donation of Kingdom licences, and FairfieldNodal (John Smythe) for providing 3D seismic prospect data in the Vermillion area of the Gulf of Mexico.

University of Arkansas 2014 January Intercession 3D seismic exploration class.
Instructor wearing tie-die .

Best Prospect winner Michael Kumbalek (right) with award standing in front of the title slide of his Mad Dog prospect., along with runner up Matthew Cope (left) and instructor Chris Liner (center). Too bad the photo is fuzzy...

Crunch Time 1/10/2014

It's early in the new year and I am nearly finished with my first class at the University of Arkansas. The course is 3-D seismic exploration taught over 10 days in January, something called the January intercession. We have three projects, the third of which is a prospect generation exercise using a Fairfield-Nodal 3-D seismic survey in the Gulf of Mexico. Today was the deadline to finish the PowerPoint for the project. It's a hard deadline at 5 PM. The picture below shows the situation a few minutes before deadline. Glad to say all 18 students got the project in on time, presentations are tomorrow morning eight to noon.

Nothing like pushing back the frontiers of ignorance, one student at a time.


If there is a benefit to coming in at 8 AM in the middle of January, it is occasionally to capture a picture like the one below. Enjoy.