At SEG 2017 in Houston I was asked by several students, including two students from Romania, if there is a future for our industry. Listening to media stories of renewable energy replacing fossil fuel energy in a utopian decade or so, and electric cars replacing internal combustion cars, the students were wondering whether getting a degree in geology or geophysics is a good long-term career choice. After giving several students several variations on the same answer, I decided to write an entry … [Read more...]
On Smart Migrations
I just finished reading a book by Peter Thiel, “Zero to One.” He starts the book with a question he always asks people he interviews for a job: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” It is a contrarian question that is related to the title of his book, he argues that while incremental innovations, making existing things better, is going from 1 to n, inventing new technology is going from 0 to 1. That made me think what would be my answer to his question, and one possible … [Read more...]
On Full Waveform Inversion or FWI
I believe Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) has been oversold by the geophysical technical community. When FWI is labeled “the Ultimate Tool”, the “Final and Ultimate Solution“, the old timers in the industry get skeptical. Art Weglein wrote in an article in The Leading Edge (TLE) in October 2013: A central purpose of this article is to bring an alternative voice, perspective, and understanding to the latest geophysical stampede, technical bubble, and self-proclaimed seismic cure-all, the so-called … [Read more...]
Seismic Industry News, Comments, Trivia and Grumbles
It is very depressing nowadays to work in the oil-and-gas services industry. Massive layoffs all around us, Schlumberger cut 30,000 jobs out of a total of 120,000, Halliburton and Baker Hughes combined cut 27,000 jobs, Weatherford cut 20,000 jobs out of 56,000, ION cut 50% or more of its workforce, Chevron and Shell cut thousands of positions globally, Cameron, CGG, Devon Energy, Marathon Oil, BP, Noble Energy, the list goes on and on. It is not pretty to look at the stock values either, CGG … [Read more...]