Background

A large independent exploration and production company with its main focus on Gulf of Mexico assets found itself in the possession of thousands of 2d seismic datasets.  These data were stored on various formats including old 8MM tapes, DLT, CD-ROM and optical disks, not to mention online SegY, UKOOA, or P1/90 files.  Understanding what data they owned, what data they had online, and what data they had archived, proved to be a daunting task for their geophysical data management team.

In addition, numerous 3d seismic volumes from multiple surveys also needed to be identified, captured, and cataloged.  The intent of the exercise was to identify if the data they had available to them matched what they owned.

The Work Begins

Paid invoices were gathered and matched as well as possible with hard-copy data storage.  Seismic data, if not already loaded into interpretation projects, in this case GeoFrame IESX® and OpenWorks SeisWorks®, were loaded.  Navigation and datasets were loaded for 2d seismic and 3d surveys and volumes as well.  But the comparison work within the interpretation applications was tedious and time consuming.  The team decided that viewing all the seismic in a single application would be more efficient, and ESRI ArcMap® was selected as the application of choice.  But how to transfer the data?

TIBCO OpenSpirit® to the Rescue

The TIBCO OpenSpirit® Scan Utility was selected to spatialize their seismic data and write it into their ESRI SDE® database, thus allowing the ArcMap® to display the SDE data in a map view across the entire Gulf of Mexico, utilizing one Coordinate Reference System.  The efficiency of TIBCO OpenSpirit® was threefold.  First, it could convert the project’s coordinate system on the fly to the target CRS storage system in SDE, thus allowing the team to compare spatial data between projects.  Second, it could batch the process to scan all the projects, regardless of source (GeoFrame® or OpenWorks®), into a single background process, thus reducing the amount of hands-on work needed to execute the transfer. And third, the transfer was automated and repeatable, so subsequent updates were reliable.

Results

After spatializing their data using the OpenSpirit® Scan Utility, ArcMap® analysis proved valuable in that the team was able to

• identify data that had been purchased multiple times
• identify gaps in their Live Trace data versus Navigation
• put into practice a system of checking their Scanned data prior to purchasing future seismic data.