SEG Advanced Modeling Corporation (SEAM) and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) would like to recognize Vincent Artus of Kappa Engineering for outstanding volunteer contributions to the SEAM Life of Field project, the latest effort by the SEAM initiative to further the state of the art in hyper-realistic geophysical simulation.

This ambitious project, which finished in December 2020, built two detailed earth models of petroleum reservoirs and their surrounding geology— a model of a Tertiary basin with clastic reservoirs created by salt tectonics and a carbonate ramp model with fractured limestone reservoirs. The geomechanical, fluid flow, petrophysical, gravity, and seismic response of each model was then simulated for 10 years of oil and gas production under different scenarios.

SEAM Life of Field was a joint effort of SEG and the project’s nine member companies: Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil, ENI, Sinopec, Petrobras, PGS, Schlumberger, and Fairfield Geotechnologies. Technical support was provided by MPG, AGT, and Octio with contributions from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

SPE had nominated Artus as its representative in an earlier demonstration project called SEAM Time Lapse, which ran in 2016 under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy. After designing the black-oil model for the turbidite reservoirs in the Time-lapse geologic model, Artus continued as a volunteer representative of SPE in the Life of Field project, coordinating advice on the simulated production scenarios from an SPE committee of reservoir engineers, as well as contributing his own expertise to quality control of the flow simulations in the Life of Field clastic model.

Artus’s volunteer efforts as a representative of SPE in an SEAM project are a model for multidisciplinary collaboration across professional societies in attacking future petroleum industry challenges.