SEG was virtually real - highlights of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists' Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana - Column

World Oil, Nov, 1998 by Perry A. Fischer

Who said low oil prices were causing an industry slowdown? You couldn't tell that at the SEG Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting in New Orleans. At 10,398, the September show had the best attendance since 1995 and set all-time records for vendor participation.

SEG exists as a promoter of exploration geophysics. This is clearly needed, since the effects of the 1980s are still reflected in low numbers of exploration-related college majors. For its part, SEG awarded 112 scholarships last year, totaling $116,450. The Society also announced a significant upgrade for its website. Thanks to a Sun Microsystems Enterprise 3500 scalable server, the website (www.seg.org) will now offer the past five years of its periodicals and annual meeting expanded abstracts. The website receives about 11,000 hits a day.

Productivity vs. oil price. At a luncheon hosted by Landmark, CEO Bob Peebler remarked on the realities of our industry. He stated that since the future price of oil is unknowable, those companies with the greatest increases in productivity will be the ones that survive and prosper. To this end, technology plays a key role.

However, initially, companies must be willing to suffer a decrease in productivity, during both acquisition and final divestiture of technology. In the initial phase, courage that the substantial investment will more than pay for itself is required.

Knowing that the new technology will probably not immediately work flawlessly, time must be allowed for set-up and debugging of new systems, both in mechanical and human terms. It is the human factor that likely will require the most time, for personnel must willingly accept, acquire and master new tools and work modalities. For some, this can be the proverbial uphill battle.

Once these beginning setbacks are dealt with, a period of increasing functionality and productivity should ensue. But this period will not last forever. Hopefully, no one believes the salesman who says "And this technology can be expanded or modified for years, even decades, without becoming obsolete." Lack of compatibility, costs of upgrade vs. replacement and fundamental changes mean that eventually, all technology becomes obsolete.

Thus, gains in functionality will dwindle, ultimately turning negative. A company attempting to compete using 1988 technology will surely be surpassed by its competitors. The challenge for management is one of precision timing: when to acquire, embrace and master emerging technologies, and inevitability, when to abandon them.

Virtual reality. While still not up to Walt Disney World standards, virtual reality (VR) has progressed to the point of compactness, affordability and utility that it will become commonplace at most E&P centers in the near future. As it exists today, and for the foreseeable future, there is no need for sensations of acceleration, sound, smell or touch, except perhaps, the "feel" imparted by a VR glove as you "hold" a seismic cube, and pry it apart strata-by-strata.

So, many of these so-called VR systems are actually 3-D, requiring glasses for viewing. The operator uses a virtual wand, glove, button or conventional mouse, and can manipulate a seismic volume at will. Such manipulations typically include slicing along a plane surface in any direction, separating at any horizon; depicting all reservoirs, fluids, existing and planned wells; and overlay of well logs.

One such system worthy of note was Fakespace's Immersive Workbench. Equipped with their choice of wand or gloves, plus 3-D stereo glasses, several people can gather around a large, 90-in. (diagonal) table and "play" with their reservoirs like children with wooden blocks.

Other systems, referred to as immersive theaters, offer multiple viewing screens, or a surround-screen, and display all of the above manipulations and data in a small-theater environment. Some of these allow optional use of 3-D glasses. Silicon Graphics' RealityCenter and Schlumberger's VisionDome represent excellent immersive systems.

Schlumberger also presented the closest thing to true VR, with its SS2000, a large seismic vessel still under construction. Within a dome-shaped theater, where walls and floor were projection surfaces, the VR-gloved operator, Tor Eilertsen, gave an impressive tour of the virtual ship. Tor explained that the system is also used for mining, since the SS2000 is considerably different from Geco Prakla's existing vessels.

An interesting presentation was given by Continuum, with its foray into interactive VR. The system enables two or more people to enter an immersive world; each represented by a flying object with their picture on it. The usual array of data sets and seismic volumes are displayed on multiple screens. The advantage here is that the users don't have to be in the same building, and each can surrender temporary control to the other for the purpose of discussion. Control is via joysticks, keyboard, voice and head movement. With so many control devices, the system is not very user friendly, but this ambitious endeavor was still under development at the September SEG meeting.