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$Colombia and Latin America
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Re: Frontera Energy versus CGX Energy share discount for Kaka-1 well, Guyana offshoreThe world of seismic data is a pretty complex one. The raw data is highly valuable - as too are the often unique ways different companies like to process and filter that raw data in ever more complicated and ingenious ways to extract and display a useful "signal" from all the massive amounts of useless "noise." Great care has to be taken not to mistake noise for signal and to enhance and amplify things that are not real. These highly processed seismic presentations in both 2-D and 3-D space are often highly prized and very securely guarded. The big players - ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Equinor, Total, etc etc, all keep their special processing techniques carefully guarded. Certain special Geophysical Specialist companies (Like Ikon Science in the UK) offer such high level processing and interpretation services to small companies who simply do not have the expertise of processing power or tools. There is a whole industry of constantly selling and re-selling of legacy seismic data. Its like prostitution. You got it. You sell it. You still got it to sell again, and again, and again! Some old stuff - paper seismic lines with industry standard processing - is available either free or for a nominal price from Government Archives or seismic brokers. For a lot of my work in BC decades ago - I would head off down to Victoria to the Government well libraries and go fishing through vast filing cabinets full of old seismic line data, well files, drilling files, testing files, production files, geological reports and well logs. Did the same in Bogota with Techno Petrol Data room stuff - masses of legacy Texaco seismic line data of features in the Middle Magdalena Valley. Much of the stuff I used to do was all accomplished using a millimetre scale ruler and a sharp pencil to create a time based spreadsheet before converting to depth and thickness. (We were still a tiny "Old School" Company back then!) Much of the wizardry in seismic interpretation comes from loading up all the raw data in a super computer system and then playing with a vast number of different filters and models - what to leave in - what to filter out - what to do with the shear wave data? There are an almost infinite variety of knobs to twiddle to tune what you are looking at - and in some ways - interpretation is an extremely finely honed art form or craft rather than a science. Where to pick a boundary? Where to highlight an amplitude anomaly to "see" hydrocarbons and not water - or simply noise that you have accidentally amplified turned into something imaginary and falsely exciting? What you see in a Company's presentations are often highly interpreted geofantasmograms - you see what you are intended to see. (And not what is actually there...) In downtown Calgary - those few really talented seismic Wizards and GrandMasters of the artform could pretty well write their own tickets... Of course we have all fallen afoul of the seismic "Woodpushers" who have seen things that are just not there... GS |
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