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Real-Time Satellite Remote Sensing with the MAGIC Direct Broadcast Receiving Station at the University of Texas at Austin

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Research and the Offshore Newfoundland Hydrocarbons

Ralph Phillip Bording, Ph.D.
Husky Energy Chair in

Oil and Gas Research

 

Memorial University of Newfoundland

St. John's, Newfoundland

Canada

Abstract
The Jeanne d'Arc basin is producing hydrocarbons, oil production restarted with the placement of the Hibernia platform.  The offshore Newfoundland projects include Hibernia, White Rose, Terra Nova, and the joint Hebron Ben Nevis fields.  These mini-mega fields have 500 million plus barrels of producible oil, a surprising amount of gas and real challenges for production.  The yet to be explored areas include the Laurentian and Orphan basins.  Further, the explored areas off Labrador with 20 drilled wells have a known 40 TCF of gas.  Gas is a problem in production from the marine fields, the current solution is re-injection.  Significant efforts are being made in developing solutions using compressed natural gas, realizing these fields will most likely use FPSO technology.

The second part of my talk will briefly review a new method for making sponge boundary conditions effective for acoustic wave equation modeling. Further, the sponge is thought to be a numerical method but a careful example shows it to be a relative of the angle dependent methods.

Finally, I will discuss the research efforts for seismic modeling and migration as directed toward reservoir characterization.  Determing the effective seismic parameters in reservoir volumes with sufficient low frequency content for full wave form inversion is essential, and with as high as frequency as possible for correlation with well logs.  The integrated petro-physical volume for reservoir management.