New Software includes HorizonCube plugin that increases number and density of mapped horizons, automatically tracks hundreds of correlated seismic surfaces, and extracts maximum information from seismic data.
OpendTect to operate on Wacom’s leading pen tablets, enabling interpreters to interact directly with the tablet in the editing and visualization processes.

Houston, Texas USA, 11 April 2011. dGB Earth Sciences, the leading provider of open source seismic interpretation software to the oil & gas industry, today announced the launch of the full version of its new OpendTect 4.2 software. The new version can be downloaded at www.opendtect.org and follows the launch of a beta version earlier this year.

In addition, dGB has also teamed up with Japanese company, Wacom, the world's leading manufacturer of interactive pen displays, and digital interface solutions, to enable seismic interpreters to use the new software in an interactive and graphics-focused environment where they can interact directly with the tablet.

OpendTect 4.2 comes with new HorizonCube and Well Correlation plugins, as well as new interpretation, editing and visualization features. Benefits include:

• A significant increase in the number and density of mapped horizons through the HorizonCube plugin, resulting in low frequency model building with a greater number of horizons and more accurate inversion results, geologically sound rock-property predictions, a realistic geologic history and well correlations, and more geological information from seismic than ever before.
  
  
• A well correlation tool with a new stratigraphic framework and interactive viewer from which users can correlate and update well markers and horizons.
  
  
• The latest in visualization, editing and data integration features. Through Wacom’s interactive pen display technology, seismic interpreters can interact directly with the tablet to draw faults, horizons, bodies and interpretive features.

“If you’re tired with picking horizons, want to work more effectively with the structure of your seismic data, and would like a clearer insight into your data’s depositional history, then OpendTect 4.2 is definitely the software for you,” said Paul de Groot, President & CEO of dGB Earth Sciences.

“Through our highly innovative HorizonCube plugin and the intuitive graphics-based workflow we have developed with Wacom, seismic interpreters will be able to reap the full benefits of knowing the complete structure of their reservoir data and will be able to generate more high-value geological information from seismic than ever before.”

The HorizonCube plugin is an advance on OpendTect’s current SSIS (Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation System) plugin and consists of a dense set of correlated 3D stratigraphic surfaces. A second generation 3D chronostratigraphy auto-tracker algorithm tracks the dip/azimuth field to generate horizons. All tracked events are assigned a relative geological age, with a corresponding colour, with the interactive slider used to add or remove chronostratigraphic events. The Well Correlation plugin includes a new stratigraphic framework and interactive viewer from which users can correlate and update well markers and horizons.

Other new features in OpendTect 4.2 include significant new cross plotting features, including cross-plot colour coding and the ability to create Probability Density Functions (PDFs) in the cross plot domain to create rock property probability volumes; an enhanced 2D Viewer with added tree, horizon and fault tracking capabilities; new directional lighting capabilities to highlight geological objects; and the ability to post OpendTect 4.2 data in Google Earth.

About dGB Earth Sciences

dGB Earth Sciences, a privately owned company based in the Netherlands, has been providing seismic interpretation solutions to the oil and gas industry since 1995. Current customers include Anadarko, BG, DetNorske, Ecopetrol, ENI, Marathon, Petrobras, Petrochina, Petronas, Saudi Aramco, Sinopec, Statoil, and Wintershall among others.

dGB’s flagship seismic interpretation solution, OpendTect, is the only available open source seismic interpretation platform used in the oil & gas industry today, allowing the visualization and interpretation of multi-volume seismic data. OpendTect, which is available at no cost under the GNU GPL license, provides sophisticated interactive attribute analysis.

dGB and its partners have also developed a wide variety of commercial plugins for customers (companies are also encouraged to develop their own customised plugins). These include plugins relating to attribute and processing analysis, sequence stratigraphy, fluid migration, rock property predictions, and velocity modelling. Partners that have also developed commercial plugins of OpendTect include ARK CLS, Earthworks, and Geokinetics. A full list of commercial plugins can be found at www.dgbes.com.

For Further Information

Jan Stellingwerff Beintema, Marketing Director, dGB Earth Sciences B.V
Tel: +31 53 4315155, Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Paul Fisher, Axiom Communications Management Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0) 1285 713 776, Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

dGB Earth Sciences, the leading provider of open source seismic interpretation software to the oil and gas industry, has announced a new service - Building a Depositional Framework - in collaboration with Surface and Subsurface Resources (SSR), specialists in the stratigraphic interpretation of wireline log data.

The new service will see the integration of two of dGB's most advanced OpendTect software modules - Horizon Cube and SSIS (Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation System) - with SSR's Depositional Trend Analysis (DTA) tool. The result will be a complete depositional framework of the target project area and improved high resolution seismic-steered well correlation of sequence stratigraphic bounding surfaces from well data and wireline logs.

"Generating a different perspective on the geological and stratigraphic aspects of data volumes is absolutely fundamental to seismic interpretation today. That's why we see our partnership with SSR and their depositional trend analysis capabilities as so important and of such high value to our customers," said Paul de Groot, president and CEO of dGB Earth Sciences.

He continues: "The result will be the most realistic possible depositional and stratigraphic architecture of the user's target field and the complete integration of well-based sequence stratigraphy with seismic sequence stratigraphy."

His words were backed up by Mat De Jong of SSR: "While our DTA tool is highly effective as a stand-alone approach for well-to-well correlation, we believe that it can offer so much more, when combined with seismic methods. That's why we are so excited about partnering with dGB today. Test runs, carried out on a Northern Dutch offshore field, have already shown that SSIS and HorizonCube can significantly enhance existing well correlation techniques which are using DTA."

OpendTect SSIS increases geologists' insights into the depositional history of sedimentary packages and establishes a context for understanding and predicting the distribution of sediment bodies. The recently launched OpendTect HorizonCube is an advance on SSIS, providing a set of continuous, chronologically consistent horizons through increasing the number and density of mapped horizons.

Together with SSR's DTA tool which, through the use of wireline log data, is applied to wells to generate a high resolution, near-synchronous, stratigraphic correlation framework and has been applied in many basins around the word, the integration of the three tools will ensure the best possible well-seismic tie. It will also create a framework of bounding surfaces and packages that represents the true depositional and stratigraphic architecture.

dGB Earth Sciences, a privately owned company based in the Netherlands and with 27 employees, has been providing seismic interpretation solutions to the oil and gas industry since 1995. Current customers include Addax Petroleum, Anadarko, BG, Chevron, CNOOC, Eni-Agip, Marathon, Petrobras, Petronas, Saudi Aramco, Statoil and Wintershall among others.

dGB's flagship seismic interpretation solution, OpendTect, is the only available open source seismic interpretation platform used in the oil and gas industry today, allowing the visualization and interpretation of multi-volume seismic data. OpendTect, which is available at no cost under the GNU GPL license, provides sophisticated interactive attribute analysis.

dGB and its partners have also developed a wide variety of commercial plugins for customers (companies are also encouraged to develop their own customised plugins). These include plugins relating to attribute and processing analysis, sequence stratigraphy, fluid migration, rock property predictions and velocity modelling. Partners that have also developed commercial plugins of OpendTect include ARK CLS, Earthworks and Geokinetics.

Since 1999, SSR has been offering unconventional stratigraphic and petroleum geological services to international oil and gas companies. SSR's expertise covers a wide range of geological settings from around the world.

Bert Bril, one of the key developers behind OpendTect made a little SEG-Y zip program to compress SEG-Y files. The program is available for free from sourceforge.net.

Bert claims that the program reduces SEG-Y files to at least 50% without a loss that is detectable in the shape of the FFT spectrum. Higher reduction factors (up to 4x) can be achieved by setting the compression level higher. Some deterioration may occur but the effects remain random in frequency. The program is tiny (like 30kb), so that it can easily be sent together with compressed data. The program removes spikes from the data before compressing. Setting the compression level to zero SEG-Y zip effectively becomes a despiking tool and can be used as such.