SEG ’15: Opening session looks to New Orleans for inspiration to “recover and prosper”
NEW ORLEANS – A highlight of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) 85th international exposition and annual meeting underway here was the opening session on Monday morning with a welcome by Julius Doruelo, annual general meeting chair; presidential address from Christopher Liner and a panel session moderated by Michael Bahorich, a director of Global Geophysical.
Recalling the previous SEG meetings in New Orleans in 1998 and 2006, Doruelo advised, “The SEG conference in 2006 was the first international conference in the city after the devastating Katrina hurricane. Just like New Orleans, we need to dig in our heels, hone our skills and then recover and prosper.”
SEG President Christopher Liner also touched upon the industry decline, citing the loss of the 200,000 jobs. “Anybody could do this job with oil at $120/bbl,” admitted the University of Arkansas professor. “But now it is a challenge. We’ve had to cut our staff expense by 7%.”
Under Liner’s administration, the SEG moved into a new building. Referring to the SEG’s previous building constructed in 1985, Liner remarked, “We seem to be launching construction projects during downturns.”
SEG currently has 32,843 members from 125 countries with 52 regional sections and 338 student chapters. Of these, 45% of the members are in North America. Significant growth has taken place in Asian and Latin American regions.
President Liner’s address was followed by a panel discussion titled, “The only thing constant is change: Strategic impacts of current and future technologies to the E&P business.” The panelists were Rocky Detomo, Omoted Consulting; Klaas Koster, Murphy Oil; Mauricio Hanzich, Barcelona Supercomputing Center; and Dr. Cynthia McKintyre, Washington Technology Partners.
Speaking on career outlook, Koster recalled the advice he received from a recruiter at Shell Oil. “Go ahead to graduate school and get your PhD. By that time, the industry will recover. Koster reviewed his extensive career in the geophysical industry, including Shell, Woodside Petroleum, Apache and now Murphy Oil. Koster also stressed the importance of volunteering for professional organizations such as the SEG.
Mauricio Hanzich suggested that while high-performance computing has its value, the tasks at hand may not require exaflop computing, but can be accomplished by a petaflop computing through parallel computing, specialization, additional memory, Big data and interdisciplinary effort.
Dr. McIntyre gave a report on high-performance computing (HPC) efforts underway in emerging countries of Africa and suggested that small or medium-sized geophysical companies could benefit by collaborating with university or government HPC resources.
The SEG conference continues in New Orleans with 620 oral presentations, 150 poster sessions and exhibits from 320 geophysical services providers and equipment manufacturers.
