Seismic Soundoff

“We always aim for 60 percent. The other 40 percent, we are ready to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and then move forward.”

A 600-meter carbonate platform forced Dr. Ahmad Riza Ghazali and his PETRONAS team to reconsider a basic assumption in their seismic workflow.

Acoustic FWI and reverse time migration could not adequately image the layers beneath it, while 3D distributed acoustic sensing revealed extensive P-to-S mode conversion at the carbonate boundary. That evidence led the team toward multiparameter elastic FWI. And images that Ahmad says helped support successful drilling.

His SEG Pacific South Honorary Lecture, Next Generation Seismic Imaging Elastic FWI and Wavefield Solutions for Seeing Through Complex Carbonates, turns that experience into a regional argument. As exploration moves toward deeper Miocene carbonates, better physics may expose plays conventional imaging misses. The remaining challenge is economic and organizational because elastic FWI costs substantially more, requires teams to learn together, and asks decision-makers to invest before the outcome is certain.

See Ahmad's upcoming schedule and register at https://seg.org/education/lectures/seg-honorary-lecture-ahmad-ghazali/.

QUESTIONS THIS CONVERSATION ANSWERS
* What does mode conversion reveal that acoustic FWI misses beneath thick carbonates?
* How did 3D DAS change the team’s understanding of a failed imaging result?
* What gives decision-makers enough confidence to drill from an emerging workflow?

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ABOUT SEISMIC SOUNDOFF
Seismic Soundoff showcases conversations addressing the challenges of energy, water, and climate. Produced by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and hosted by Andrew Geary of 51 features, these episodes celebrate and inspire the geophysicists of today and tomorrow. Three new episodes monthly. See the full archive at https://seg.org/resources/podcast/.

Julian Chenin calls IMAGE “Disneyland for geoscience,” and after walking the exhibition floor it is easy to understand what he means. But for ROGII, the real value is what happens when people stop at the booth, pull out a notebook, and start sketching an idea together. Julian describes it as innovation happening in real time, with people from different parts of the subsurface workflow suddenly in the same conversation.

Those conversations have mattered as ROGII has grown from a company focused mainly on geosteering into a much broader part of the subsurface workflow. This year Julian is hearing renewed interest in older assets, northern Brazil, Guyana, Africa, the Gulf of Mexico, and underdeveloped unconventional plays. His point is that exhibiting is not simply about showing what you already built. Sometimes the conversations on the floor help determine what you should build next.

LINKS
* Attend IMAGE '26 - www.imageevent.org/
* Listen to Inside IMAGE Podcast Series - www.imageevent.org/podcast

Companies have spent years storing more and more data, but Amii Rozell and Hana Kabazi make an important distinction: saving the final answer is not the same as saving why you made the decision. Three years later, the interpretation may still be there while the lease problem, environmental concern, rejected idea, meeting discussion, or uncertainty behind it has disappeared. AI can help recover that context, but it can also sound very sure of itself when the record has holes.

That leads to one of the most useful AI conversations I heard at IMAGE. Amii says companies are doing plenty of explaining about what AI is, but not enough training on how employees should actually use it. Hana’s advice is essentially the same thing teachers have always asked for: prove it. Ask where the answer came from, ask what the model does not know, understand the difference between public tools and protected enterprise systems, and do your own research before turning an AI inference into an operational decision.

LINKS
* Attend IMAGE '26 - www.imageevent.org/
* Listen to Inside IMAGE Podcast Series - www.imageevent.org/podcast

Geoscientists Without Borders starts with a simple idea: geoscience can improve someone’s life. Jim Funk has seen what access to clean water can mean in African communities, while Craig Beasley talks about projects that help people prepare for earthquakes and volcanoes, recover forgotten burial sites near Houston, and give students the experience of using geoscience for something deeply human.

Twenty years in, GWB does not have a shortage of ideas or need. Craig and Jim say dozens of proposals can arrive when only a handful can be supported. That makes funding one of the central challenges now. More money could mean larger grants, longer projects, and work capable of reaching far more people. GWB has already shown what geoscientists can do. The question is how much more becomes possible if the profession and industry chooses to back it.

LINKS
* Geoscientists Without Borders - https://seg.org/programs/geoscientists-without-borders/
* Attend IMAGE '26 - www.imageevent.org/
* Listen to Inside IMAGE Podcast Series - www.imageevent.org/podcast

This one is personal for me. I worked with Reinaldo Michelena, Lucía Torrado, and Sergio Chávez-Pérez on this project for years, and after more than a decade of effort, seeing a printed Spanish edition of Robert Sheriff’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Geophysics at IMAGE was genuinely moving.

More than 140 volunteers helped turn thousands of technical terms and hundreds of figures into a book for geoscientists who work in Spanish every day. And this was intentionally human work. No AI translation. People from across the Spanish-speaking world debated terminology, challenged regional bias, redrew figures, wrote code, and kept showing up until the book was real.

Some of the people who helped make it possible, including Sven Treitel, Héctor Alfonso, and Susan Stamm, did not live to see the finished book. That gives this accomplishment a weight that goes far beyond publishing a dictionary. By the end of the conversation, Reinaldo, Lucía, and Sergio are reflecting on friendship, professional growth, and what it means to spend years working on such a meaningful project.