Press release: 23 February 2009

dGB Earth Sciences and Geokinetics have launched a new system for Velocity Model Building (VMB) and Pre-Stack Depth Migration processing. The new software runs in OpendTect and was developed with financial support from Gaz de France and OMV. The first release comprises three (closed source) plugins. VMB is a dGB proprietary plugin for picking RMO velocities and pre-stack events. PSDM-Tomography and PSDM-Kirchhoff are proprietary plugins by Geokinetics. These plugins are released with relevant tools from Ethos, Geokinetics’ internal seismic processing system, to form a complete PSDM processing system.

Paul de Groot, President & CEO of dGB Earth Sciences said: “Costs and quality of PSDM processing are largely dependent on the time-consuming, manual process of building and updating velocity models. Reducing cycle times means you can run more iterations in less time and thus produce higher quality PSDM outputs at lower cost. This is what we aimed for when we started to develop this system three years ago. The first release of VMB includes vertical update - and horizon-consistent update modules. Velocity gridding, horizon picking, 3D body generation and QC are performed in OpendTect Base; the Open Source part of the system. The design of the new system is such that it can support multiple PSDM processing systems. All structures needed to interface a PSDM system to OpendTect – VMB are released in the Open Source domain. We invite other service companies and E&P companies to link their PSDM systems to OpendTect – VMB. Together we can thus continue to develop the next generation VMB – PSDM solutions.”

Lee Bell, Chief Geophysicist, Geokinetics Inc, added “Velocity model building is closely related to interpretation. Modern interpretation tools for identifying and constructing horizons, bodies and faults greatly facilitate the process of transforming seismic data into a geologically feasible depth image.”