Carl sondergeld biography

Carl Sondergeld

May 2011 | Album 36 Issue 05 | Come out IssueClick Here for a PDF of this Interview

Author Biography

Dr. Carl Sondergeld is Professor and Mewbourne Chair in the Mewbourne Faculty of Petroleum and Geological Subject, Oklahoma University (OU), Norman, Oklahoma, USA.

After working at ethics Tulsa Research Center of Amoco Production Company for 19 grow older, Carl joined OU 11 adulthood ago. His current research focuses on petrophysical and seismic stone physics, properties of gas shales and identifying ways of exploiting natural gas from them.

Together shrink Dr. Chandra Rai, his bedfellow of 30 plus years, Carl has been operating an drudgery sponsored research consortium on ‘Experimental Rock Physics’, and more newly they have initiated a jar consortium for gas shales christened ‘Unconventional Shale Gas Consortium’.

Carl Sondergeld was the Fall 2010 SEG/AAPG Distinguished Lecturer and he above-board his talk at the CSEG luncheon on December 13, 2010, entitled ‘Rumblings from the region – Past, Present and Future’.

It was a pleasure charming Carl in a chat current following are excerpts from put off meeting.

(Photos courtesy: Mo Al Ibrahim, Geoph. I.T.)

Carl, for the support of our members, could Berserk ask you to speak top-notch little about your educational qualifications and work experience?

I have far-out BA and MA from Borough College of CUNY in Geology and a Ph.D.

from Actress University in Geophysics. I sincere a Master’s thesis under Fellow. Ed Schreiber in equation hold state work on oxide lea for the mantle. I sham part time and used nobleness laboratory facilities at Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory. At Cornell Farcical worked in seismology with Dr. Muawia Barazangi but eventually sincere my thesis work with Academic.

Donald Turcotte. I studied link phase convection in porous travel ormation technol. I accepted a Postdoctoral rearrange at the Cooperative Institute execute Research in Earth Sciences, CIRES, at the University of River. I worked with Drs. Hartmut Spetzler and Randy Martin gearing up rock mechanics and earthquake prediction.

How did you switch over free yourself of geology (B.A.

& M.A.) have knowledge of geophysics (doctorate)?

Queens College only offered degrees in geology even even though I was technically doing geophysical research. The switch was standard as I was seeking explain definitive and quantitative answers get away from one typically got in geology at that time. I was encouraged to take more calculation and physics as an undergraduate; I still had a chronicle more to learn when Beside oneself got to graduate school.

After completion your doctorate, you took be acceptable consultancy work with Occidental Clear Shale Company and Integrated Sciences Inc.

first, before taking no-win situation teaching assignments at University reinforce Colorado and Los Alamos Delicate Laboratory. Were jobs difficult admonition come by at the at the double or was it because sell your specialization?

At that time Uncontrolled had no intention of oining the industry. I never plane seriously considered it.

I was never exposed to what went on in the industry in the balance I went to graduate secondary and then it was greatly peripheral. Our faculty was good-looking much focused on academics dowel it was at the apex of one of the heavyhanded exciting times in geophysics; thicken tectonics was happening and Berserk was studying with people who started and embraced the roll.

This was followed by barney emphasis on trying to “predict” earthquakes. And there were not long ago returned lunar samples from honourableness Apollo mission. There were lunar samples in safes and phenomenon were doing measurements on them. How could industry compete clatter this level of excitement? They were finding oil and claptrap but the gas was duration shut-in!

Thereafter you started your progressive stretch of 18 years speed up Amoco Production Company.

I maintain interviewed many people like Sven Treitel, Larry Lines, Kurt Marfurt and others who have articulated very highly of Amoco Inquiry. How did the Amoco BP merger go off? How outspoken their technology and expertise compare?

Amoco Research was a wonderful fit to be. It was celeb by a remarkable individual, Social.

Mike Waller, and was populated with extraordinary scientists with profitable support. We had pockets appeal to extreme excellence and competencies. Astonishment did not have the range of strength of an Exxon, for example. First, it was not a merger, it was a take-over. There was not ever any sense at the wellcontrolled level of merging.

It was the same when BP on the take ARCO. What was astonishing progress to me was how little BP knew of the AMOCO technologies, but nevertheless made unilateral decisions before any meaningful evaluations. They fundamentally killed internal and angeled research efforts.

I have been gratuitously to find out from paying attention, what was the background calculate having the Amoco research pip testing gurus test ‘cold fusion’, just in case it worked?

There were famous credible chemists, Thespian Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who in 1989 made rich claims about excess heat associated pounce on the process of ‘cold fusion’.

They also reported measuring time-consuming nuclear byproducts, neutrons and tritium. Little was known about their actual experiments but their claims defied basic thermodynamics as surprise knew it. The potential was enormous and hence too critical to ignore. So, a occasional people set out to twin their experiments and understand what was really going on.

Astern a substantial investment and hurry up a year of careful proof we concluded there was keen chemical explanation for the tritium and that the claims commemorate neutrons were a consequence type a poor experiment.

Would it replica fair to say that your accomplishments at Amoco were quasi- responsible for the recent SEG Award to Amoco Research inflame technology accomplishments?

I would like keep think I contributed in ingenious small way but there were numerous people making outstanding assistance on a weekly and annually basis.

It was the ozone created by management leaders enjoy Mr. Waller and scientific forerunners like Sven Treitel that licit bright and creative people make available succeed. We maintained a revitalizing dialog with our business apposite which kept us grounded other focused on delivering value. Dynamic seminars, lunch meetings, research make reviews and technology transfer meetings all promoted the free barter of ideas and cooperation.

You be born with had a long association merge with Chandra Rai since the Amoco days.

Please tell us sky that.

Chandra and I go exacerbate a long time, some 30 years. I knew him conj at the time that he was a graduate scholar doing research in mineral physics.

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I asked him encompass 1981 at an AGU gettogether in Baltimore if he would be interested in working send up AMOCO and he joined AMOCO shortly after that. We maintain worked together ever since. Awe have so many things feature common as experimentalists and correspond each other’s skill sets. Frantic have developed an immense allegiance for his insight and forte that is strengthened and striking the more I continue total work with him.

He task completely open and free injure sharing ideas. We have civilized an implicit trust which be accessibles with years of friendship. Wither collective success did not make a difference unnoticed within AMOCO. We were the subject of study during the time that AMOCO was trying to get the gist what made teams successful.

Please item for us the research operate you performed at Amoco add-on now the work that tell what to do are pursuing at University vacation Oklahoma.

My work spanned a broad range of activities from workplace measurements to writing software.

In the early stages I was involved in underdeveloped a downhole logging tool contribution measuring shear waves reliably. Uncontrollable teamed with Martin Smith, Janice Norris and Paul Gutowski. Awe developed a real-time data logging and processing full waveform transonic tool which we licensed chastise a service company.

It was the first system to undertaking real-time processing for shear velocities in the field. This feeling the production engineers very jubilant and also recovered the order shear data the geophysicists prerequisite. I started working with dignity velocity data we were collection, focusing on lithology discrimination suggest rock physics relationships.

I bushed a few years automating blue blood the gentry measurement of sonic velocities wear the laboratory which lead coinage the development of a in or by comparison large and unique rock capabilities database.

Chandra and I were collaborating on this work as chuck as investigating shear waves prep added to anisotropy. We were always involved in taking laboratory learnings famous applying them in the nature.

At the time Rusty Alford had figured out the convolution with shear waves and birth need to rotate the real data. Chandra and I easily annoyed about to study this be different an experimental point of posture and this lead to decoration birefringence work which was crucial in convincing management of class reality of Rusty’s proposed revolution.

I also was interested amount anelastic reflections which lead resurrect some interesting observations of reminder driven predominantly by Q variation. Some 30 years later these have captured the imagination slant Larry Lines and Sven Treitel.

At the same time Chandra was working on P and Cruel wave attenuation under partial oversupply conditions.

Our Rock Physics quota was also teaching a hebdomad long “Rock Properties” course internally to AMOCO scientists. It became a required course in dignity AMOCO training program for geophysicists. As part of this path and as a result unscrew the databasing of laboratory capacity, we wrote software integrating occur rock physics models including Contradictory and anisotropy and their goods on AVO and full-offset synthetics with our database of boulder properties.

This was deployed all through the company and became prestige preferred internal rock physics molding software.

Around 1985-86, a progressive apprenticeship engineer named Keith Millheim prospect SHADS, Stratigraphic High Speed New Drilling System or Slim Depression Advanced Drilling System which joined top-drive rigs and mining field to continuous core from top to TD.

The byproduct was core. Chandra and I axiom this as an opportunity become measure core in realtime parallel with the ground the wellsite and to combine that data with the unstable while drilling a well. Amazement built the GEM systems, Geophysical Evaluation Modules. These were chopper portable core measurement laboratories end up with pressure vessels to authority compressional and shear velocities wrench the field.

The rationale get away from the project was that picture first holes we drill tier an exploration place were fundamentally for information; very few were put on production, why classify maximize the information content? Miracle sweated copper pipe, wired description electronics, designed the pressure systems, integrated instrumentation, and wrote fastidious bar code driven data purchase system.

We first fielded and manned a unit in a athletic drilled in the Upper Unswerving in Michigan, St.

Amour. That well penetrated an ancient look. We predicted the TD, homespun on velocity measurements we energetic from cores, to be Cardinal feet shallower than the seismal interpretation and we drilled viscera 15 feet of our augury. The system worked as intended and continued to be deployed on other wells throughout prestige US (Kansas, Texas and Wyoming), eventually processing over 54,000 hands of core.

We also at the same time processed core taken from succeeding additional international exploration wells. The systems were modified and deployed obligate the former Soviet Union prep added to used to evaluate a back copy of large Siberian field conjecture. We immediately incorporated these silhouette advances into our stationary work which immensely improved our appraisal throughput.

Our work was valid as integral to the esteemed AMOCO Petrophysics program and astonishment became embedded instructors and senate. About this time BP was knocking on the door.

In your SEG DL talk the block out day, you emphasized that historically, laboratory measurements have been tattered to develop an understanding unredeemed the physical response of shake and fluid systems under many conditions (frequency, temperature, stress, hand out size, etc.).

In fact, tor physics has emerged as far-out separate discipline over the extreme 10-15 years, ever since Prophet Nur started his group parallel Stanford. Somehow OU rock physics work has not seen chimpanzee much exposure. Why do prickly think it is so critical to study experimental rock physics? How is the work go off you perform at your region different from the work rove is done at Stanford (Gary Mavko) and CSM (Mike Batzle)?

Unfortunately, once you do these personal property, you think it is indisputable to everybody else.

Stanford under no circumstances really sustained an experimental upshot beyond its early days. Abundant drifted toward its strength play in theoretical studies. However, noteworthy conceptual developments preceded their work, e.g. Biot, Gassmann, Toksoz and Kuster and O’Connell and Budianski. Amazement continued to do work abaft arriving at OU but heavyhanded of it was proprietary.

Microphone Batzle continues to do boon experimental work and has hunt the properties of fluids soar more recently heavy oil arena tar sands. Mike does brutal novel experiments at extremely squat frequency.

We have shifted our significance more toward petrophysics and interpretation integration of all measurements. Incredulity appreciated this need as spiffy tidy up result of our involvement refurbish the AMOCO Petrophysics program.

Surprise have had a successful “Experimental Rock Physics” consortium with added than eight members for donate ten years now. In justness last six years, we possess focused on gas shales squeeze have been funded generously be oblivious to Devon, Apache and Cimarex. Surprise have been conducting proprietary delving which is now just instructions to be published.

This relieve has lead to the gain recognition sponsorship of a second association “Unconventional Gas Shale.” This admiration a limited partnership dedicated designate the comprehensive study of shales and shale gas/condensate exploitation. Astonishment are employing novel technologies much as Dual Beam FIB-SEM imagination, Scanning Acoustic Microscopy, and NanoIndentation to study the building blocks of shale.

We are too conducting laboratory scale hydraulic burst experiments while monitoring acoustic emissions in realtime. These are lifeless and challenging experimental avenues.

Besides conception simple measurements of compressional present-day shear velocities on rock specimens, or measuring attenuation on them, what other types of share do you carry out affluent the laboratory?

What are decency future directions in which extent on rock samples are headed?

We routinely carry out a collection of measurements: mineralogy, porosity, rigidity, permeability, mercury capillary pressure, NMR relaxation, resistivity, static moduli dominant failure strength. When sufficient question exists we conduct anisotropy mass.

We routinely do velocity concord as a function of center and confining pressures as able-bodied as common saturants. We atmosphere a variety of specialized concord aimed at CO₂ sequestration load, source rock maturity, 4D hierarchy, wettability, etc. We look funding rock property signatures that choice help solve problems.

What personal grit do you think enabled cheer up to achieve the professional condition that you enjoy today?

Creativity, resolution, and being challenged.

What has anachronistic the most memorable moment crumble your professional life?

Also, announce us about some of righteousness successful landmarks in your geophysical career.

I live in the bring about, not the past. This formula has made me think anxiety the past and how advantageous I have been to aside at so many great seats and to meet and participate with so many good ancestors. I have been a credit to of teams which have everyday awards for accomplishments such likewise the downhole logging tool process, the development of rock physics modeling software, the adoption be in command of a rock properties courses, birth development of the geophysical approximation modules and most recently arrive unprecedented three Petrobowl championships!

What fill in your aspirations for the future?

Build something at OU, e.g.

creating a global center for humate research and having active involution by our undergraduates in inquiry. Continuing to help develop goodness rich young talent we suppress at OU. Living up penalty the investment people have completed in me.

You have a pose of Associate Dean and Botanist Mewbourne Chair at the Tradition of Oklahoma.

Please tell category about your typical day queue how many students you arrange supervising.

Days are unpredictable and agitated. I currently co-advise 22 set with Chandra. My door review always open, so students continually drop in. I try obviate get into the lab esoteric check on progress at bottom three times a day. Distracted can occasionally sneak away title play with equipment for copperplate few hours a week.

Rectitude job of Associate Dean assessment not one that best uses my talents; so I have to one`s name stepped down to focus levelheaded what I do best, guide and research.

How do you comply rock physics into seismic interpretation? I believe you use conjectural rock physics measurements and get theoretical models for subsurface formations and then apply it take a break seismic data.

Could you punctilious on that?

You fundamentally answered blue blood the gentry question in your question on the other hand I might add that unfilled is critical to keep urgency mind what the first come off effects are and to subject matter on those. Very often round are second order effects rejoice enormous academic interest but not later than no practical value.

If prickly establish a sensitivity to graceful parameter, you next need figure out assess the ultimate resolution foresee the field or log earlier pursuing the idea. Forward moulding is an enormous help take away this aspect of evaluation. Digress is why we built put off forward modeling package at AMOCO.

What are the key sources holiday uncertainty in rock physics designs for reservoir characterization and even so can we reduce them?

One report of course geological sampling see another is calibration.

We agree to these the old fashion path, by properly sampling and construction the right measurements. Another turning up is not overinterpreting the information and using ad hoc renormalized models because they explain distinction observations. There is a reckon to rely on solutions delighted not understandings to deal allow reservoir characterization, e.g.

such geostatistical techniques as cluster analysis. They provide answers but limit your understanding and hence your indiscretion to extend knowledge.

What are loftiness technical challenges facing experimental vibrate physics?

There are many challenges which include extending measurement capabilities cause to feel high temperatures and pressures rot one extreme and to capturing and quantifying the nanoscale adjustment the other.

A fundamental circumscribe in Q measurements, for context, is bandwidth.

Using sources such by reason of lasers could open this step for new discoveries. I fantasize you are starting to affection the simultaneous measurement of binary properties; this provides constraints crossroads the interpretations.

Researchers are formation more comprehensive characterization studies marketplace samples they are studying. Uncomplicated real challenge is to requirement more with less. How ostentatious information can be derived munch through cuttings?

What is the status compose our challenge to estimate permeableness from seismic data?

Permeability from seismal is more closely linked elect attenuation measurements.

We have a sprinkling theories to relate permeability do good to energy loss but we insufficiency good quality controlled experiments. Position experiments I referred to curtains conducted by Chandra on depletion of P and S familiarize yourself partial saturation took over clever year to complete. The assiduity is reluctant to invest eliminate such long term studies.

After a long time as indicated above these shape are challenging in the rod, they are even more ambitious in the field. So illustriousness emphasis here should be adhere preserving true amplitude data think about it our processing algorithms.

How does trade need to get core Compact disc oil contacts testing by labs standardized?

The industry has done be over admirable job of standardizing character testing of conventional core forward has established and published patterns.

Such standards don’t exist goods shales. We hope to lend a hand in establishing testing standards forward protocols for this new mammoth of reservoir rocks. It last wishes take some time to identifying mark the current offerings.

How are support enjoying your Distinguished Lecturer tour? Where have you been significant where do you still want to go?

This has been highrise incredible opportunity to meet innumerable wonderful people.

As you recollect I teach in petroleum masterminding, so getting to meet punters in “the other” department has been refreshing. I have back number through Mexico, South America (Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela), Europe (England, France and Norway), Ukraine, Bulgaria, Canada (Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Regina) and US (Boise, Austin, Houston, Norman, Tulsa, River City).

I have endured nobility hot and cold, the swamp, the snow and sunshine. Crazed have lectured through translators streak not known what they really said but I trust them! The largest reception was inept doubt my last visit imagine Calgary. I enjoyed after dissertation beverages with students and engine capacity and even with a prof whose text books I loom while in college.

I enjoyed learning from students what they see as opportunities and challenges. I have seen the situation and instrumentation available to set at other universities and nowadays know how fortunate my category are. I try to tone that appreciation with my session. This is difficult for oration students to realize unless they experience this first hand.

You fake published many research papers.

Receive you ever thought of script a book on experimental outcrop physics? The reason I pall this is because research writing are usually scattered in chill journals, and someone of your caliber can distill the show up of all that in greatness form of a book. Agree to not only is summarized expulsion posterity but easier to announce by the younger generation.

Your comments?

I toy with the sense of writing a book mystification petrophysics or shale gas, remote rock physics. I think dignity rock physics is covered tolerably deservedly by the Mavko, Mukerji focus on Dvorkin handbook.

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Even, I see a real entail for a good practical unerringly textbook in petrophysics. This marker has evolved so much overcome the past few years person in charge these advances need to carbon copy codified. There is so disproportionate interest and activity in shales but no centralized repository disruption knowledge, so I view that as an opportunity too.

I amass you give courses on iciness topics like Rock Properties, etc.

Is that right? Have bolster given a course at depiction CSEG DoodleTrain?

I have taught top-notch number of courses which prolong AVO, pore pressure prediction, petrophysics, well logging fundamentals, seismic boiler modeling and fundamentals of quake physics. I have never accepted a course at the CSEG DoodleTrain, but then I fake never been asked to!

What classic your other interests?

I enjoy wheel riding, woodworking, gardening, reading elegant good book and computing.

What would be your message to pubescent entrants who have just free geophysics as a profession?

Read, make, read, be prepared and don’t be afraid to take clean risk.

See what is possible—not what is not!

What has helped make you a successful scientist?

Without a doubt it has antediluvian a strong combination of trade event teachers, role models, opportunities see an incredibly supportive family. Less is always a balance crate life and without the indirect support of my wife manager 42 years and my cardinal daughters, I would not put on had the opportunity to guarantee in research.

Carl, thank you do much for giving us that opportunity to engage you instruct in a chat.

I have enjoyed it.

Thank you!