• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.38 no.3 s.172
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• pp.335-346
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• 2005

In this study, core sediments and pore water were analysed to identify the origin of organic matter and Bas in late Quaternary sediments from the northwestern Ulleung Basin of the East Sea. C/N and C/S ratios in the sediments show that the organic matter in the study area originated predominantly from marine algae. However, the results of Rock-Eval pyrolysis indicate that the organic matter has an origin of the land-plant (Type III), locating in the immature stage. These different results might be due to the heavy oxidizing of the organic matter during sinking down to the seafloor or after deposition in the sediments. Concentration of sulfate in the pore water decreases gradually with core depth, while concentration of $CH_4$ increases gradually with core depth. This indicates that sulfate reduction and methanogenesis occurred actively in the sediments. Also, it is likely that the compositions of $CH_4$ are characterized as a more biogenic origin, mostly caused by microbial activity, rather than a thermogenic one.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.63-75
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• 2016

The ratio of fractured reservoir is very high in oil & gas fields around the world. The demand of drilling technology for fractured reservoir is expected to increase continuously if oil and gas prices are economical. The purpose of the review study is to help operator or driller in selecting of proper drilling technology for preventing a lost circulation in the fractured formation. In order to achieve this goal, fractured reservoir(formation) they are classified into partial lost circulation formation and total lost circulation formation. In case of partial lost circulation formation, the drilling problem can be solved by using LCM(lost circulation material) mud additive and squeezing cement. For shallow depth, total lost circulation formation can be drilled safely and economically with casing drilling method. Also, for deeper depth, problems of total lost circulation in formation can be solved by applying mud cap, which is one of the drilling methods. This was confirmed through field application such as Italy's Medusa-1 field and Qatar's North field.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2003

Recent geomorphological changes and late Quaternary depositional sequences of Gwangyang Bay are studied based on bathymetric maps, surface sediments, and seismic profiles. As a result of the reclamation of coastal area for an industrial complex construction, the coastline of Gwangyang Bay has rapidly been changed and the area of it has now been reduced by about 25 ％ in the last 30 years. In addition, the bottom topography is actively modified by dredging for navigation channels. In surfical sediment distribution, the western part of Gwangyang Bay is dominated by mud facies, whereas the eastern part of the Bay is dominated by sand-mud mixing facies. Depositional sequences above the basement are divided into two units: Unit I in upper layer and Unit II in lower one. These depositional units are unconformably bounded by middle reflector-M. Unit II, mostly occupying the channel areas, is interpreted as fluvial-origin deposits during sea-level lowstand. Unit I typically shows a progradational pattern from the Seomjin River mouth to the Yeosu Strait, which is interpreted as deltaic deposits supplied from the Seomjin River during the Holocene sea-level highstand. The shallow gas within the sediments Is widely distributed in most area, and locally exposed onto the sea-bed due to dredging.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.171-177
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• 2002

Two piston-core sediments, obtained from the southwestern margin of the Ulleung Basin in East Sea, are analyzed to investigate the stratigraphy and sedimentary environment of the Late Quaternary. The cores consist mainly of cuddy sediments with silty sands, lapilli tephra and ash layers. The chronostratigraphic correlation with known eruption ages reveals that the core sediments contain the stratigraphic document over the past 46.1 kyr and the sedimentation rates during the last glacial period were relatively higher (12.1-14.9 cm/kyr) than those in pelagic ocean. Several sedimentary facies, mainly affected by turbidity currents, are commonly present in the core interval accumulated during the oxygen-isotope stage 2. Many of horizontal voids, which are thought to have formed by gas expansion, are observed in fore 00GHP-07. The total organic carbon (TOC) contents of the core sediments are noticeably high (average 1 .8%). Particularly, these TOC valuers increased during Termination I, suggesting that dering this time interval the sedimentary environment of the study area was changed to more anoxic.

• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2008

As conventional oil and gas reservoirs become depleted, interests for oil sands has rapidly increased in the last decade. Oil sands are mixture of bitumen, water, and host sediments of sand and clay. Most oil sand is unconsolidated sand that is held together by bitumen. Bitumen has hydrocarbon in situ viscosity of >10,000 centipoises (cP) at reservoir condition and has API gravity between $8-14^{\circ}$. The largest oil sand deposits are in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. The reverves are approximated at 1.7 trillion barrels of initial oil-in-place and 173 billion barrels of remaining established reserves. Alberta has a number of oil sands deposits which are grouped into three oil sand development areas - the Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River, with the largest current bitumen production from Athabasca. Principal oil sands deposits consist of the McMurray Fm and Wabiskaw Mbr in Athabasca area, the Gething and Bluesky formations in Peace River area, and relatively thin multi-reservoir deposits of McMurray, Clearwater, and Grand Rapid formations in Cold Lake area. The reservoir sediments were deposited in the foreland basin (Western Canada Sedimentary Basin) formed by collision between the Pacific and North America plates and the subsequent thrusting movements in the Mesozoic. The deposits are underlain by basement rocks of Paleozoic carbonates with highly variable topography. The oil sands deposits were formed during the Early Cretaceous transgression which occurred along the Cretaceous Interior Seaway in North America. The oil-sands-hosting McMurray and Wabiskaw deposits in the Athabasca area consist of the lower fluvial and the upper estuarine-offshore sediments, reflecting the broad and overall transgression. The deposits are characterized by facies heterogeneity of channelized reservoir sands and non-reservoir muds. Main reservoir bodies of the McMurray Formation are fluvial and estuarine channel-point bar complexes which are interbedded with fine-grained deposits formed in floodplain, tidal flat, and estuarine bay. The Wabiskaw deposits (basal member of the Clearwater Formation) commonly comprise sheet-shaped offshore muds and sands, but occasionally show deep-incision into the McMurray deposits, forming channelized reservoir sand bodies of oil sands. In Canada, bitumen of oil sands deposits is produced by surface mining or in-situ thermal recovery processes. Bitumen sands recovered by surface mining are changed into synthetic crude oil through extraction and upgrading processes. On the other hand, bitumen produced by in-situ thermal recovery is transported to refinery only through bitumen blending process. The in-situ thermal recovery technology is represented by Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage and Cyclic Steam Stimulation. These technologies are based on steam injection into bitumen sand reservoirs for increase in reservoir in-situ temperature and in bitumen mobility. In oil sands reservoirs, efficiency for steam propagation is controlled mainly by reservoir geology. Accordingly, understanding of geological factors and characteristics of oil sands reservoir deposits is prerequisite for well-designed development planning and effective bitumen production. As significant geological factors and characteristics in oil sands reservoir deposits, this study suggests (1) pay of bitumen sands and connectivity, (2) bitumen content and saturation, (3) geologic structure, (4) distribution of mud baffles and plugs, (5) thickness and lateral continuity of mud interbeds, (6) distribution of water-saturated sands, (7) distribution of gas-saturated sands, (8) direction of lateral accretion of point bar, (9) distribution of diagenetic layers and nodules, and (10) texture and fabric change within reservoir sand body.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.603-620
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• 2021

A land nodal seismic system was employed to acquire seismic reflection data using stand-alone cable-free receivers in a land-river area. Acquiring reliable data using this technology is very cost effective, as it avoids topographic problems in the deployment and collection of receivers. The land nodal airgun system deployed on the mouth of the Hyungsan River (in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk Province) used airgun sources in the river and receivers on the riverbank, with subparallel source and receiver lines, approximately 120 m-spaced. Seismic data collected on the riverbank are characterized by a low signal-to-noise (S/N) and inconsistent reflection events. Most of the events are represented by hyperbola in the field records, including direct waves, guided waves, air waves, and Scholte surface waves, in contrast to the straight lines in the data collected conventionally where source and receiver lines are coincident. The processing strategy included enhancing the signal behind the low-frequency large-amplitude noise with a cascaded application of bandpass and f-k filters for the attenuation of air waves. Static time delays caused by the cross-offset distance between sources and receivers are corrected, with a focus on mapping the shallow reflections obscured by guided wave and air wave noise. A new time-distance equation and curve for direct and air waves are suggested for the correction of the static time delay caused by the cross-offset between source and receiver. Investigation of the minimum cross-offset gathers shows well-aligned shallow reflections around 200 ms after time-shift correction. This time-delay static correction based on the direct wave is found essential to improving the data from parallel source and receiver lines. Data acquisition and processing strategies developed in this study for land nodal airgun seismic systems will be readily applicable to seismic data from land-sea areas when high-resolution signal data becomes available in the future for investigation of shallow gas reservoirs, faults, and engineering designs for the development of coastal areas.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.26-32
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• 1999

Among the various seismic data processing sequences, the velocity analysis is the most time consuming and man-hour intensive processing steps. For the production seismic data processing, a good velocity analysis tool as well as the high performance computer is required. The tool must give fast and accurate velocity analysis. There are two different approches in the velocity analysis, batch and interactive. In the batch processing, a velocity plot is made at every analysis point. Generally, the plot consisted of a semblance contour, super gather, and a stack pannel. The interpreter chooses the velocity function by analyzing the velocity plot. The technique is highly dependent on the interpreters skill and requires human efforts. As the high speed graphic workstations are becoming more popular, various interactive velocity analysis programs are developed. Although, the programs enabled faster picking of the velocity nodes using mouse, the main improvement of these programs is simply the replacement of the paper plot by the graphic screen. The velocity spectrum is highly sensitive to the presence of the noise, especially the coherent noise often found in the shallow region of the marine seismic data. For the accurate velocity analysis, these noise must be removed before the spectrum is computed. Also, the velocity analysis must be carried out by carefully choosing the location of the analysis point and accuarate computation of the spectrum. The analyzed velocity function must be verified by the mute and stack, and the sequence must be repeated most time. Therefore an iterative, interactive, and unified velocity analysis tool is highly required. An interactive velocity analysis program, xva(X-Window based Velocity Analysis) was invented. The program handles all processes required in the velocity analysis such as composing the super gather, computing the velocity spectrum, NMO correction, mute, and stack. Most of the parameter changes give the final stack via a few mouse clicks thereby enabling the iterative and interactive processing. A simple trace indexing scheme is introduced and a program to nike the index of the Geobit seismic disk file was invented. The index is used to reference the original input, i.e., CDP sort, directly A transformation techinique of the mute function between the T-X domain and NMOC domain is introduced and adopted to the program. The result of the transform is simliar to the remove-NMO technique in suppressing the shallow noise such as direct wave and refracted wave. However, it has two improvements, i.e., no interpolation error and very high speed computing time. By the introduction of the technique, the mute times can be easily designed from the NMOC domain and applied to the super gather in the T-X domain, thereby producing more accurate velocity spectrum interactively. The xva program consists of 28 files, 12,029 lines, 34,990 words and 304,073 characters. The program references Geobit utility libraries and can be installed under Geobit preinstalled environment. The program runs on X-Window/Motif environment. The program menu is designed according to the Motif style guide. A brief usage of the program has been discussed. The program allows fast and accurate seismic velocity analysis, which is necessary computing the AVO (Amplitude Versus Offset) based DHI (Direct Hydrocarn Indicator), and making the high quality seismic sections.