Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
Why bother using synthetic seismograms (aka. synthetics) to calibrate well info to our seismic data? Simple answer, TO REDUCE DRILLING RISK !
For example, I’ve seen prospects “evaporate” because the originator was mapping the wrong event—or just as bad, started mapping on the correct event, but ended up on the wrong event due to a character, or response change in the seismic data. This only became evident after a couple of synthetic correlations!
I also continue to see prospects that are being sold on the strength of an amplitude, or avo response, that is somehow related to a key wellbore. However, often a synthetic hasn’t been used to tie (correlate) the well to the seismic data. How could they even know for sure what was causing the anomaly, without a synthetic tie?
So, with these recent real-life examples in mind, I thought that it would be a good idea to cite some reasons why we should use synthetics, with a blog posting.
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Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
I was just notified that the instructions in the info page of the Culture Symbol Spreadsheet (posted on 02/08/08) were in error.
I had copied-and-pasted the intial text, for the info page, from another spreadsheet, and thought that I had made the appropriate changes. However, I may have uploaded the wrong version when I finished.
Sorry for any confusion, previously. I have corrected the version in the original posting, but here is the corrected Culture Symbol Spreadsheet, along with the ascii file that goes with it.
Copyright © T/X RESOURCES, 1995-2008. All Rights Reserved.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
Here’s the latest in the series of T/X Resources spreadsheets designed to help when you need to create symbols to import as an SMT culture layer.
In the image below, a variety of symbols have been created to highlight certain wellbore attributes. For example, they could represent producing formations, hydrocarbon shows, well log types, or test results. You can also vary the symbol sizes, and colors, to represent a ranking order, such as production volumes, etc. It doesn’t really matter what you want to show on your map—this is an easy way to do it.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
Ranking the oil reserves of the top 25 countries illustrates the vast difference between first-ranked Saudi Arabia and eleventh-ranked U.S.—we have slightly more than 8% of Saudi Arabia’s total reserves (we do a little better in the category of natural gas reserves however, ranking 6th in the world).
Another sobering statistic derived from this data, is that five of the top six ranked countries (OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) currently control nearly 55% of the world’s oil reserves (the entire group of OPEC countries control almost 70%!!).
These top five OPEC countries are all within a few hundred miles of each other—the four largest, share common borders. Iraq and Iran, which are potentially the most unstable of the middle-eastern OPEC countries, control almost one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves!!
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
This plot illustrates a disturbing, long-term trend for the U.S., towards an increasing dependence on imported oil (includes crude oil, and natural gas liquids) to meet our current consumption levels of over 21 million barrels per day (over 892 million gallons)—more than it’s ever been.
Put another way, we currently consume over two decent-sized, domestic oil fields per day!! While consumption (purple graph) has been steadily increas- ing since a low in the early 1980’s, domestic production (blue graph) has been declining since the mid 80’s. Since then, we have been importing an increas- ing amount of crude oil, as evidenced by the diverging trends. Since March 1993, over half of our total domestic consumption of oil, has come from foreign sources—we currently only produce about 32% of the oil we consume.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
The latest available salary figures for 2006, published in the AAPG Explorer (April 2007 issue), indicates that overall, salaries climbed 16 percent.
In the six age groups that Mike Ayling of MLA Resources currently tracks, the largest salary increase was 18% in the 15-19 year category. Entry level geologists saw a 9.5% increase, with the 3-5 year category rising 13 percent.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
The interrelationship between oil prices, the number of drilling rigs, and the number of mining employees can be seen more clearly in this combined plot. The price of oil (green plot—see posting of 01/22/08) has been a leading indicator of oil industry trends, followed by the drilling rig count (black plot—posting of 01/30/08), seven to nine months later. This is then followed by the number of mining employees (red plot—posting of 01/25/08), one to three months later.
The magenta arrows illustrate the relationships at two points during the last 35 years: one during the industry peak of the early 1980’s, and the other at one of the low points during the late 1990’s.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
This posting is an update of the ”Active Domestic Drilling Rigs and Seismic Crew Count” statistics which I created, and originally posted on the HGS GeoJob Bank ”GeoJob & Energy Statistics” page. However, the HGS page has not been updated since I “retired” as Chair of the Personnel Placement Committee, so I have decided that I would continue updating, and posting the graph here.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
For anyone who experienced the fluctuations in the oil business during the last 30 years or so, the descriptive “roller coaster ride” in the title only partly explains our adventures.
At the time of the hiring peak of the oil industry—December 1981—there were nearly 1.18 million people employed in the mining industry (a Bureau of Labor Statistics category which includes the oil industry), as seen on the blue employee graph in the image below (generated with Golden Software’s Grapher program).
Oil prices had just peaked at $34.59 per barrel (average monthly price) nine months earlier, but it was still selling at nearly $31 per barrel that December. During the same time period however, March to December 1981, industry unemployment had crept up to 7.5 percent, from just 4.4 percent (black graph in the image below)—an increasing trend that went unappreciated by most of us at the time.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.
Author: Mike Cline, T/X Resources
Anyone who has visited the Houston Geological Society’s (HGS) GeoJob Bank, or more specifically the GeoJob & Energy Statistics page, is bound to recognize this graph. During my nearly six-year tenure (2000-2005) as Chair of the Personnel Placement Committee, I created and updated the industry-related graphs on the Statistics page (amoung my many other duties). However, since I “retired” from the Committee in late 2005, the graphs haven’t been updated, so I thought that this would be a good venue to revive some of the graphs, and keep them current with updated information.
This first graph, in a series to come, is the oil and natural gas price curves for 35-years—from January 1973, through the last available data in December 2007. It was created from downloadable data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Information Agency, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, saved to a spreadsheet, and then graphed with Golden Software’s Grapher program.
See the larger Adobe Reader pdf file.