DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERIZED INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN SEISMIC DATA PROCESSING

Thesis Overview

INTRODUCTION  The exploration activities involve the acquisition of data and processing.  As exploration activities increases in the modern world, the computer manufactures are also working hard to produce super computers and their processing algorithm: thus with high computing power to cope with the larger data processing that are involved.  Owing to the inevitable roles that are played by the oil industries in the modern world, the federal govt. recently issue out a white paper enforcing all oil companies to do more exploration to increase oil reservoir. This means that there will be more data acquisition and processing jobs in the near future.  The importance of oil exploration in modern countries can never be our emphasized.  In the United States of America and Britain, Intensive exploration activities are on for the last two decades all in a attempt to have enough oil reserves.   And so seismic data processing is very indispensable in the oil industry because it is the first step taken in the discovering of hydrocarbon or better more seismic data processing is a key sequence in search for hydrocarbon.  In the processing of seismic data, care should be taken because if not properly processed, it might lead to wrong interpretation and this might lead to false prospect.  In fact wrong processing will reduce the success ration in the discovery of hydrocarbon and this causes the cost of drilling to increase.  In essence, wrong processing will lead to drilling false prospect and we know that it costs millions if not billions of Naira to drill a well.   The role of the govt. in oil industry had gradually progressed from a regulatory one to direct involvement in all exploitation and exploration initially government only made rudimentary laws and collected royalties from the oil companies.  By 1971 the situation changed as oil become more important to the Nigeria Economy.  Oil accounts for about 90% of the total foreign exchange earning for the country.   In essence, Nigeria that wants increase in her revenue, must engage in acquisition, processing and management of seismic data.  Seismic data management system is therefore a software development for the purpose. That is why the case study was the integrated data services limited (IDSL) Benin city a subsidiary of the Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC). 1.1            PROBLEMS OF THE STUDY In the search for hydrocarbon, the initial question had always been where exactly under the surface of the earth are the anticlines or the structures within which the hydrocarbon can be accumulated. This question is answered in part by seismic data acquisition and in the main by seismic data processing. Acquisition means the acquiring of the raw data while processing transforms and refines these data to level where the above question is answered. The problem is how can this information collected from the field be presented and protected from destruction.  That is why the tape librarians were introduced to help in managing these tapes, but as time goes on the number of tapes acquired becomes so large in number that the librarians cannot manage then effectively.  This has created many problems for the management.           The solution to the problem will lie in removing any factors that inhibit the ability of the librarian to make the storage and the retrieval of tapes easy in the organization. 1.2            PURPOSE OF THE STUDY This research will be very useful to both students, individuals, co-operate bodies and general public as a whole who are either engaged or way wish to engage in seismic date acquisition and processing in the future. The purposes are as follows: 1.                 Ensuring the acquisition of good quality seismic data in an effective manner. 2.                 Ensuring that all field tapes collected from the field are sent to the processing center and the seismic data in the tapes are presented in a form that is convenient for geological interpretation. 3.                 To ensure that processing sequence are followed and a good result suitable for acceptance. 4.                 Ensuring that the processed seismic sections which is the final output of a processed field tape is used to identify specific areas for future field appraisal development. 1.3            SCOPE OF THE STUDY In this research work the study was limited to the use of Electronic Data processing (EDP) on the information management control in seismic Data processing. 1.4            LIMITATION Due to the work load, enough research could not be made to other known seismic data acquisition and processing organizations.  But hope that the little information obtained is applicable to all other seismic data organizations.