In Person Only Event

Meeting Location:
Norris Conference Center
816 Town & Country Blvd
Houston, TX   77024
(Free parking off Beltway-8 northbound feeder or Town & Country Blvd.)

Meeting Time: 11:00 to 1:00
Registration Begins at 11:00
Lunch Served at 11:30
Presentation starts at Noon

NOTE: You Must Be Logged In to Register.

Speaker: Greg Partyka, OpenGeoSolutions

There is a wealth of geological insight in seismic data. To maximize the information that can be extracted requires:
        (1) careful and comprehensive preparation, analysis, and extraction
        (2) real-time visualization that avoids problems associated with data access and data management.
These two aspects are equally important, and together they form the basis of research, development, implementation, and services at OpenGeoSolutions.

(1) Extracting Geologic Content that is Embedded within Seismic Data

Backstory: At BP-Amoco, we comprised the go-to team for questions regarding seismic signal analysis and characterization. We provided research, development, support, and training associated with BP-Amoco's internal Unix Seismic Processing (USP) software: show up on Monday with broken seismic and by the end of the week it was fixed, and a new capability/code was added to the kit. Our team invented seismic spectral decomposition and its inversion…and was behind the BP open-sourcing of USP as FreeUSP. In 2007, the team reassembled under the OpenGeoSolutions banner and we created a business to develop and provide leading-edge seismic characterization/inversion services “beyond BP" with OpenSEIS – our proprietary fork of the FreeUSP toolkit. Fast forward to 2021, we have continued that rich history of innovation.

We research, develop, implement, and apply, state-of-the-art analysis, characterization and inversion technologies that qualitatively and quantitatively maximize resolution and detection of rock and fluid properties, discontinuities, flexuring (on-structure, paleo, and differential), morphology, and heterogeneity. This allows us to decompose the data into a comprehensive set of attributes/dimensions that respond to distinct characteristics. The goal is to ensure nothing important is missed for purposes of exploration, development, and carbon sequestration.

(2) Exposing the Dimensionality - Real-Time/Instant Access

Early on, we realized that data growth associated with seismic characterization and inversion can easily overwhelm end users. Databases become unwieldy, due to the sheer volume of computed attributes, problems with data access, and problems with data visualization. If the data and access to the data are not managed reasonably, the interpreter is forced to focus on functional issues rather than on the interpretation questions. Painless data access, presentation, and visualization are just as important to the act of interpretation, as the content itself.

Currently available interpretation/visualization solutions are great for doing detailed (surgical) subsurface work, but they require expert knowledge not only related to the subsurface science, but also related to preparing the data, loading the data, scaling the data, rendering the data, displaying the data, not to mention the tedious mechanics associated with using the interpretation/visualization software itself. Hardly ever, will everyone on the multi-disciplinary team, be an expert in all aspects of this. The prominent seismic interpretation software providers have continued with incremental improvements, but many of the same-old bottlenecks remain and get in the way of instant access to exploration and investigation. There will always be a need for Individuals to dig into the intricacies of full-fidelity datasets within traditional interpretation software...but that very discipline-specific expert-effort does not address the critical, front-end-loaded multi-disciplinary exploration and discovery. That is why, with every project, (in addition to delivering the traditional SEG-Y files) we deliver a Navigator (i.e. a comprehensive "ready-to-display" subsurface image library, powered by our web-based viewer). This makes the seismic characterization instantly and intuitively available, via a web browser (no new software to learn). There is no need for the time-consuming prep that is traditionally required when visualizing seismic data via today's seismic interpretation and visualization software. This (in effect) bridges the gap between processing and interpretation by providing a comprehensive pre-rendered backdrop for subsurface investigations. With every such delivery, the interpretation team gets to fly through their virtual subsurface within minutes of getting access to the image library. You can explore and investigate a pre-rendered virtual subsurface (in its full dimensionality, captured at one pixel per bin), in near real-time, without the bottlenecks associated with delays associated with reading, parameterizing, processing, and rasterizing of seismic data. This allows you to jump right into the data, and objectively visualize, explore, and geo-reference geological components, in a way that requires no prep time and ensures nothing important is missed.

At OpenGeoSolutions, we take both aspects seriously. Our goal is to reduce bottlenecks and obstacles, decrease subjectivity, and encourage multi-disciplinary interaction. 

Speaker Biography: Greg Partyka, OpenGeoSolutions
Greg Partyka received a degree in Geological Engineering from the University of Manitoba in 1987. From 1988 to 2007 he worked for Amoco, then BP, in Canada, Poland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has moved back and forth between assignments in operations and technology. This mix of roles allowed him to experience research, development, application, and just as importantly, the value that appropriate technology can bring to business decisions. Along the way, he has focused his efforts on multidisciplinary problem solving and improving our ability to decipher geologic content embedded in seismic data. In 1996, he deepened his knowledge of reservoir characterization by participating in an intensive, year-long petrophysics training program. In 2003, he received the SEG Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal for developing spectral decomposition as a technique for reservoir characterization. In 2005, he was the the SEG Distinguished Lecturer. In 2007, he joined OpenGeoSolutions, where he continues to research, develop, implement, and provide services associated with extracting and exposing geological and engineering content that is embedded within seismic data. He was the Chairman of the SEG Distinguished Lecture Committee from 2007-to-2009. In 2012, he was awarded Honorary Membership to the Geophysical Society of Houston.

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