Doug Uffen with Reflection Peak has authored and co-authored numerous papers most of which have been presented at industry conventions and/or published in industry trade publications. A full list of papers can be viewed in the Oral Papers and Written Papers sections.
The following exerpt is taken from, “The Great Seismic Round-Up: A Database Clean-Up and Management Case Study”, which was published in the CSEG Recorder.
The Great Seismic Round-Up:
A Database Clean-Up and Management Case Study
Doug Uffen, Lisa Michetti, Linda Dickson, Jan Hay, Judith Churchill, Lyle Geck, Arnold JansenThe Chief Geophysicists’ quarterly meetings and the CSEG Seismic Data Issues Forum has heightened awareness of seismic data ownership issues and have endeavored to publish a set of industry standards for future practice on various issues. Eleting to follow these guidelines is one matter, but being able to follow them may be a whole new issue for oil and gas companies. The quality of a corporation’s seismic database may hamper its ability to follow any given policy, be it internally or externally driven, if the information in it is fraught with discrepancies and inaccuracies.
In 1997, Canadian Forest Oil Ltd. embarked on a two-year process to clean up its seismic database and upgrade in parallel its geophysical software and hardware in order to manage more efficiently all aspects of the company’s seismic data with instantaneous access. The purpose of the exercise was to build a database that contained trustworthy information that could be used with confidence in numerous ways. It also put in place the hardware and software tools to maximize the efficiency and use of the seismic data from initial data inventory through to archived interpretations.
This perspective offers a whole new definition of seismic data management, one in which accountability and value is emphasized from initial data archival, through data processing and interpretation, ending with workstation interpretation archival. A key element to this project was the fact that seismic data sales revenue was immediately accredited to the seismic expenditure budget each month making this a self-financing project with pay-out projections. This fundamental point governed and propelled the thinking that the data is used either as confidential information to find oil and gas exploration opportunities or that it is an asset to be sold to maximize its value to the company. Either way, value is extracted and realized.
For a full and printable copy of this paper CLICK HERE.