AAPG plans to hit the ground running at this year’s Offshore Technical Conference (OTC).
With technical sessions designed to have cross-discipline appeal across the industry, Buford Pollett, chairman of the AAPG technical subcommittee for OTC, said this year’s topics were specifically chosen to attract a broad spectrum of professionals.
“The most important part of AAPG being at OTC is the fact that traditionally, OTC has relied on the expertise of all societies. Engineers, geophysicists and geoscientists – everybody has something to bring to the table,” Pollett said.
“It’s our professional responsibility as geoscientists to contribute in a way that not only benefits our professional societies,” he said, “but OTC at large.”
AAPG’s technical program extends well beyond topical discussions, Pollett added. It is technically sound in all respective disciplinary areas.
“The expertise of the people who help build these programs is unsurpassed,” he said. “They are at the top of their fields in the industry.”
Some of the highlights include:
♦ “Geoscience Technology in Offshore Projects: Emphasis on Pore Pressure Prediction,” will cover the direct application of geoscience technologies and analysis and is directly attributable to the overall economic and technical success of offshore oil and gas exploration and production projects.
This session will present a focused overview of this aspect of technology that involves pore pressure detection.
♦ “Well Integrity: Planning, Management and Assurance,” will discuss the criticality and demands on wellheads that have increased in recent years, as drilling has moved into deep water, involved high pressure wells, and met more challenging environmental conditions. This session will present an overview of key technologies related to the design, load prediction, analysis, monitoring and operational aspects of wellhead integrity.
♦ “Advanced and Integrated Geophysical Interpretation” will give a sampling of some of the most effective recent advances in interpretation and integration of geophysical data, including seismic and electromagnetic input. These presentations will exemplify the power of emerging techniques such as principal component analysis, self-organizing maps, broad data integration, interferometry, controlled source electromagnetic probing and optimization of constraints on large inversions.
♦ “Broadband Seismic – Recent Advances, Current Pitfalls and Future Promise” will discuss how broadband seismic data collection and processing have contributed substantial improvements to the accuracy and uniqueness of seismic interpretation and inversions, both conventional velocity and impedance inversions, as well as full waveform inversion.
The presentations in this session exemplify the recent impact on automation, resolution, AVO, well-tie accuracy, reservoir characterization, velocity model building and a glimpse into future tools that may contribute much more.
♦ “Advances in Quantitative Geohazard and Georisk Assessment” will bring together geological and geotechnical practitioners and researchers to share advances in quantitative geohazard and georisk assessment that are especially relevant to challenging projects in which site conditions are difficult to characterize and there is little room for error.
A slate of speakers drawn from industry and academia will offer expertise ranging from theory to practice, with emphasis on innovative approaches to the integration of both geoscientific and geotechnical engineering concerns.
♦ “Caspian Sea Site: Integrated Geohazards Assessment” will discuss methodologies and strategies to assess geohazards in the Caspian Sea. The southern Caspian is one of the most geohazardous areas in the world in which the oil industry operates with a variety of issues superimposed atop, and interacting with, one another.
This session will provide a variety of reviews of industry findings over the past 20 years as well as state-of-the-art integrated studies of geohazard issues from ongoing operations.
♦ “Reservoir Evaluation and Reservoir Management” will showcase a series of papers from industry and academia that demonstrate how a multidisciplinary approach is critical in optimizing field development in which various complementary and analytical methods are required.
This session will highlight innovative approaches to reservoir evaluation and management.