SEAM Projects
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Land Seismic Challenges: Foothills Model
The digital Earth models and geophysical data sets of SEAM Phase II: Land Seismic Challenges are now available for licensing from SEG, as part of SEAM’s charter of advancing the science of applied geophysics for the petroleum industry and for public benefit.
This second SEAM project, which ran from 2011 to 2016, built three models designed to embody specific challenges in the exploration and characterization of petroleum reservoirs on land:
The Foothills model focused on features of mountainous regions, including sharp topography and soft alluvial fill at the surface and complex structures at depth caused by compressive fold and thrust tectonics.
Each of the designs was translated into an industrial-scale digital Earth model consisting of a combination of surfaces, geobodies, and grids built with different geologic modeling software available at the time. The model was then discretized into a set of physical properties: for all three, this was done on a regular grid with fine enough sampling to capture the key structural and stratigraphic features. Finally, the gridded model was used to simulate the raw data of a suite of geophysical measurements, including three-dimensional (3D) surface seismic and borehole seismic surveys, as well as surface and airborne gravity and electromagnetic (EM) surveys including full-tensor gravity (FTG), airborne EM, ground controlled source EM (CSEM) and magnetotellurics (MT).
In aggregate, more than 100,000 seismic shots were simulated over the three SEAM land models, representing more than a petabyte of high-quality seismic simulations. Data sets are available in standard 3D orthogonal field layouts, as well as in carpet-style surveys with millions of channels.
For the Foothills model recording of the complete wavefield at a dense array of three component receivers covering the surface to allow experiments testing data interpolation and extrapolation algorithms in regions of rapidly varying topography.
SEAM Phase II ran under the direction of a management committee consisting of representatives from 22 oil and oilfield-service companies.
Participants
Get the Best Technical Modeling While Saving Money
Guide the formation of the project and tailor it to your specific needs while sharing the cost effort of substantial model design and generation. Get exposure to diverse expertise supplied by each participating company and access to the data two years before the industry.