07 September 2003 #0336.html

Seismic Interpretation

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, Matt via hardcopy, and Brian,

cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"When Melanie and Sara went with me to look for our roots, I ended up telling them a story from about 1977. They had never heard it, and sure enough, as I do a few word searches, it appears I have never written it out in a Thoughtlet. I expect there are a lot of these. It was interesting to have the comment, Dad, this is a lot better thing to write about than what business lunch you had! I agree. And frankly unless we spend time together talking, I'm not sure how it is going to come up that I forgot a good story like this one. Actually I did reference it sideways in the Thoughtlet titled Tarzan (../9925.html) when I wrote:

`or crossing the Mississippi size river between Mauritania and Senegal in West Africa in a one person wide dugout canoe with my colleague Rod Avainius from Mobil Oil.'


But how did I get in that 30 foot long dugout canoe, with a black man rowing in the front and another one in the back with our suitcases sitting between us? It is all because of seismic interpretation.

I went to work for Mobil on July 15th, 1974, and was in a one year hands-on training program learning about seismic interpretation, seismic acquisition (../0237.html), and then seismic processing. I liked seismic interpretation far the best, and was given my first assignment after the training program to work for the original MEPSI (Mobil Exploration and Producing Services International) under Jack Peffer. It was a fun job. My first project was a regional interpretation of the Andaman Sea, projecting Mobils' large reef gas discovery in North Sumatra into the area between Thailand and the Andaman Islands. It was a neat project, and there is a lot of deep water opportunity here, which has yet to be exploited. The rainbow map I generated was remembered by Stewart Moncrief 20 years later as a real innovation. However, when I presented the results, the boss fell asleep in my presentation and I really took it personally.

Then I was moved on the other side of Malaysia and worked with a team doing regional mapping of the South China Sea. There was some transition and I worked with an inactive member of the church, Clem Novosad, on an equity redetermination of the Statfjord Field in the Norwegian North Sea. My seismic interpretation contouring change was worth more money to Mobil than I care to try and figure out. There was a gravity interpretation and modeling project on the Gargano High in Southern Italy, interpretation of salt pillows on Superior Oil seismic data offshore Israel, looking for reefs on seismic data in the Puerto Rico, a six month assignment to work for Mobil New Orleans on a Gulf of Mexico lease sale, and other similar seismic interpretation projects.

MEPSI was dissolved and became SEP (Special Exploration Projects) in the new MEPSI (... Incorporated). I was assigned to the South American Team. I worked up maps of reflectors on regional seismic data in Peru, and then was assigned to do a big regional seismic interpretation offshore the Falkland Islands (../9814.html), all the way up Argentina to Uruguay. I encouraged Mobil to pursue the Falkland Islands, and about the same day I turned in my report, there was a gun ship battle between British and Argentina battleships. This was 10 years before the Falkland War, which England entered because of the North Sea like appearance of the geology. It is interesting there have been no major discoveries off of the Falkland Islands yet.

It was about this time that Mobil decided to bid on the first Brazil offshore lease sale. A female interpreter named Jeanie (?) and I interpreted the block by the mouth of the Amazon River. I was put in charge of consolidating the reports on all 10 of the lease blocks. It was interesting, and because my boss liked the work I did, he arranged for me to go to Mauritania. And this is where the story starts.

My traveling companion, as mentioned above was Rod Avenius (../9925.html). He was a geologist, and was almost ready to retire. He had been the Exploration Manager for Mobil in Nigeria when the Biafra War broke out. Before that he had worked for years in the jungles of Central and South America and had collected many artifacts and brought them to Nigeria with him. When the war broke out, there was not time to take out their stuff. They were allowed one suitcase, and were flown by helicopter to the platforms offshore to be evacuated to Europe. He described flying over the soldiers marching on Port Harcourt and seeing them point their guns at them. He was an experienced West Africa hand.

Our assignment was to evaluate the Shell Oil Casamance Farm-Out offshore Senegal. I was to do the seismic interpretation and Rod was to do the geologic interpretation. We spent about four days doing this work and writing up our recommendations. During this time we found ourselves:

  1. in a bar on the beach where the only thing available to drink was beer (When told no one would know, I responded I will know and I am someone, and God will know. They found me an orange Fanta.);
  2. in a bar where a group of topless female dancers came in and did a native dance (I took several photos, and they were not developed by Kodak when I got back to the states);
  3. on a beach with a tribe that lived in grass huts just off of he beach, and spent most of their time fishing (Watching the family interaction and kids being taught by uncles and aunts and all that was going on, I felt like it was the closest I have ever been to what the Celestial Kingdom must be like).

After finishing with Shell, we got plane tickets to fly to Nouakchott, the "new" capital of the country of Mauritania. Western Mauritania is near where Timbuktu (Tombouctou) is located, which is suppose to be the most desolate place on the planet Earth (16.46N 3.01W). Rod made the plane reservations, and I thought nothing of it. Figured it would be like flying from Cedar City to Salt Lake. NOT! As we boarded the plane the French expat pilot hit a panel, which fell open, and all of these wires were hanging out connected by twisted pairs. He started to undo and redo them. Obviously there was a short. Then we noticed the seat covers. They were gunny sacks, and looked like they had been used to hold ground up byproducts from the Lower Plant. Then we saw the live animals in the back of the plane, and a fondue type of apparatus with a live sterno flame cooking something. I didn't fall asleep on the flight, and we were both very glad to get off the plane.

We didn't plan our trip very well, because it was the Thursday before Easter. Being half Moslem and half Christian and all West African, the Mauritanians took all Christian and all Moslem holidays off. We were to meet with the government ministers and obtain permission for The Mobil Search, Mobil's seismic acquisition ship, to collect seismic data offshore. We could not meet with them because their offices were closed. So our host, the local Mobil distributor had to put up with us for a long weekend. On good Friday we drove a couple of hundred kilometers to watch a basketball game which he was sponsoring to help elevate the kids from poverty. It was fun. They were big kids. It was sand dunes everywhere we went.

On Saturday he showed us around the city. The Presidential House had been built by the Chinese. The military headquarters had been built by the Russians. The paved highways were courtesy of the British. The hospital came from the U.S. The whole city had been built in the previous few years to make it a real capital city. He took us to the sea shore where they had racks for cleaning and drying fish. It smelled just like the lower plant. I was OK, and Rod almost lost it. The took us to new housing developments being sponsored by U.S. groups. They were cinder block apartments. Sort of looked like storage sheds do in Houston, except there was nothing around except sand and dust. Then they took us to an agricultural experiment. There were rows and rows of lettuce and other vegetables. I was impressed. I asked, `Where do you get the water?' He pointed and I watched a lady come out of a long trench in the ground with a large container of water on her head. After probing, we learned the water was raw sewage from the city. They took us to a fancy restaurant that evening, and when they brought out the salad, they were bragging that it came from the agricultural project we visited. Neither Rob nor I choose to eat any salad. I did sneak a piece of bread and some bottled water, and the next day, which was Easter Sunday, had my own private sacrament meeting. It was a very special experience, and one I will always cherish. I'm sorry I haven't told you about it before.

We had our meetings with the government officials on Monday. They were largely Arab, it was a desert country, and these facts implied to them that there had to be significant oil reserves in the country. So they wanted more than we were authorized to offer to collect seismic offshore. The meetings were a failure. It is interesting that last year, 26 years after my visit, there was a large discovery in the deep water offshore Mauritania. Of course, we and Mobil's management did not know that a long time ago. So Rod called to make our return plane reservations. They wanted a bribe, and Rob said, `No thanks! We'll just take a cab.

So we took a series of cabs the 400-450 km from Nouakchott, Mauritania to St. Louis (where we crossed the Senegal River in the canoe) to Dakar, Senegal. It was one long trip, and I have a wonderful set of slides someplace showing the change from mud huts to brick huts to grass huts to stick huts to larger stick huts to the houses in the suburbs of Senegal. We stopped at several `towns' and visited with the people and took photos of the houses and the people. There were little children with stomachs sticking out because of malnutrition. It was a real eye-opening experience, and came about because of seismic interpretation.

It is interesting that I spent a year and a half after this working for Mobil Producing Nigeria, doing seismic interpretation for them on the Niger Delta. This work actually started on this trip, because I flew from Dakar to Lagos, where I got my initial Nigerian seismic interpretation instructions. And that is another story, for another time.

On Tuesday the 2nd of September, I showed up at II&T at 8:00 AM to host 6 Nigerians. The key man was Otumba Ayo Oduntan. They finally arrived at 11:30. There was no one from VRMT or Emerald to support the presentation. I spent until about 5:00 giving the Emerald presentation and going into detail on the various opportunities. It was nice to be trusted by Jude, and I got the distinct impression, these guys are basically taking the block away from Emerald. Oh well!

I spent Wednesday and Thursday doing a seismic interpretation of the conglomerates in the Casey Ranch Project. It was an interesting challenge, and I think I solved a long standing problem using instantaneous phase seismic sections. It is interesting how easy it is for me to take seismic data and find a way to pull geologic information out of it.

However, I got an e-mail from Aunt Sara about how important it is for women to have girl friends. I don't do such a good job of interpreting this type of data. Here is the article for you to purview:

`UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN By Gale Berkowitz A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research--- most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber toothed tigers. Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight; In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it. The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something. The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health. It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. There's no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer. In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%. Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake; women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience. Taylor, S. E.; Klein, L.C.; Lewis, B. P.; Gruenewald, T. L.; Gurung, R.A.R.; & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight" Psychological Review, 107(3),41-429.'


I associated more with the e-mail from Audrey, which I really enjoyed:

`I SAT IN MY SEAT OF THE BOEING 767   I sat in my seat of the Boeing 767 waiting for everyone to hurry and stow their carry-ons and grab a seat so we could start what I was sure to be a long, uneventful flight home. With the huge capacity and slow moving people taking their time to stuff luggage far too big for the overhead and never paying much attention to holding up the growing line behind them, I simply shook my head knowing that this flight was not starting out very well.   I was eager to get home to see my loved ones so I was focused on "my" issues and just felt like standing up and yelling for some of these clowns to get their act together. I knew I couldn't say a word so I just thumbed thru the "Sky Mall" magazine from the seat pocket in front of me. You know it's really getting rough when you resort to the over priced, useless sky mall crap to break the monotony.   With everyone finally seated, we just sat there with the cabin door open and no one in any hurry to get us going although we were well past the scheduled take off time. No wonder the airline industry is in trouble I told myself. Just then, the attendant came on the intercom to inform us all that we were being delayed. The entire plane let out a collective groan. She resumed speaking to say "We are holding the aircraft for some very special people who are on their way to the plane and the delay shouldn't be more than 5 minutes. The word came after waiting six times as long as we were promised that "I" was finally going to be on my way home.   Why the hoopla over "these" folks? I was expecting some celebrity or sport figure to be the reason for the hold up.........Just get their butts in a seat and lets hit the gas I thought. The attendant came back on the speaker to announce in a loud and excited voice that we were being joined by several U. S. Marines returning home from Iraq!!!   Just as they walked on board, the entire plane erupted into applause. The men were a bit taken by surprise by the 340 people cheering for them as they searched for their seats. They were having their hands shook and touched by almost everyone who was within an arm's distance of them as they passed down the aisle. One elderly woman kissed the hand of one of the Marines as he passed by her. The applause, whistles and cheering didn't stop for a long time. When we were finally airborne, "I" was not the only civilian checking his conscience as to the delays in "me" getting home, finding my easy chair, a cold beverage and the remote in my hand. These men had done for all of us and I had been complaining silently about "me" and "my" issues. I took for granted the everyday freedoms I enjoy and the conveniences of the American way of life I took for granted others paid the price for my ability to moan and complain about a few minutes delay to "me" those Heroes going home to their loved ones.   I attempted to get my selfish outlook back in order and minutes before we landed I suggested to the attendant that she announce over the speaker a request for everyone to remain in their seats until our hero's were allowed to gather their things and be first off the plane. The cheers and applause continued until the last Marine stepped off and we all rose to go about our too often taken for granted everyday freedoms....... I felt proud of them. I felt it an honor and a privilege to be among the first to welcome them home and say Thank You for a job well done. I vowed that I will never forget that flight nor the lesson learned. I can't say it enough, THANK YOU to those Veterans and active servicemen and women who may read this and a prayer for those who cannot because they are no longer with us. GOD BLESS AMERICA! WELCOME HOME! AND THANKS FOR A JOB WELL DONE !!!!!'


Friday Dick Shanley, should I say Bishop Dick Shanley, came over to II&T to visit and took Gary Jones and I out to Lunch. Bishop Shanley is in the Memorial Ward, and is my new Landmark salesman. I showed him several of the innovations I routinely use in doing seismic interpretation, and he was very impressed. He does not see Landmark taking advantage of any of this work, and when I told him I had just done a seismic interpretation project on some Indonesian data was quick to point out he lived and worked in Indonesia for 9 years for Phillips Petroleum and would love to have an opportunity to go back. It was a nice afternoon discussion, and hopefully we can find ways for both sides to find some upside.

That evening I tried to find the High School where Matt was taking video of the Taylor football game as the Team Manager. I got lost, and ended up just going to the bookstore. I bought two books on MySQL, the database Marc Roulston is going to install on my Sun server, and `A New Kind of Science,' by Stephen Wolfram. I'm very excited about this last book, and expect you will read a lot about it over the next few months and years. I learned about it in Science Digest, talked to Uncle Des about it, and realized how close it is to Bill Bavinger's work. Time will tell if it was worth $150 for these three books.

I spent all day Saturday building the basic framework for Sara's Benin web pages (see www.walden3d.com/benin). I am building a way she can download data, and upload messages, have access to e-mail, and be able to keep track of how safe she is, while she is in the Peace Corps. Sara, you seem to like what I showed you. Hopefully we will be able to spend some time before you leave and build some functionality into what has been started. I will be in Washington D.C. Tuesday through Thursday this next week, and so it will need to be after September 18th.

Saturday evening we went to the Taylor High School football game. Both Andrea and I took books. Guess that shows our interest. We sat next to the Hagens and the McPherson's. The game was OK. And Taylor nicely beat the game. Matt was pretty excited when he got home. Sort of reminded me of how I feel while doing an interesting seismic interpretation."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2003 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.