Revitalizing legacy data: How Blueback Toolbox enhances seismic interpretation at Innargi
Innargi, a pioneering company in geothermal energy for district heating, faced a unique challenge: working with decades-old, non-digital seismic data to assess geothermal potential in urban areas. By integrating Cegal’s Blueback Toolbox into their seismic interpretation workflows, Innargi successfully converted and unlocked the value of this legacy data, enhancing their ability to make informed business decisions.
In this article, Nicolai Andersen, Junior Geoscientist, shares how these workflow enhancements have driven greater business efficiency and project success.
The challenge: Unlocking the value of legacy seismic data
Innargi’s projects are focused on unlocking onshore geothermal resources in urban areas currently focusing on Denmark, Poland, and Germany. These regions have historically been explored for hydrocarbons, leaving behind valuable legacy seismic data, primarily in the form of scanned 2D seismic sections. This legacy data plays a crucial role in screening potential areas, but it is not natively digitized, posing a challenge for modern interpretation workflows.
The workflow: Seamless vectorization of seismic data
A key part of Innargi’s subsurface workflow is the vectorization of scanned seismic sections using Cegal’s Blueback Toolbox. One of the core features Toolbox provides can be used to convert legacy seismic images into fully digital formats that can be easily imported into Petrel*, Innargi’s modeling platform, facilitating detailed analysis.
Blueback Toolbox is essential for bringing our legacy seismic sections to life. Nicolai Andersen explains that they use the vectorization feature on virtually every project to maximize the use of existing data.
This workflow begins with preprocessing the scanned seismic sections, correcting any distortions from the scanning process. Once the images are properly aligned, the Innargi geoscientists utilize the 'Import Image as 2D Seismic' feature available in Blueback Toolbox to vectorize the data -providing an efficient solution for a task that Petrel originally lacks native functionality to perform. This process ensures that Innargi can work and interpret high-quality subsurface data, even from older datasets.
Positive impact on decision-making
The integration of legacy seismic data through the Blueback Toolbox directly impacts Innargi’s ability to evaluate the geothermal potential in an urban area and thereby make informed decisions. The digitized seismic lines are incorporated into the subsurface models, providing a clearer understanding of the geology. This, in turn, allows Innargi to make better-qualified business decisions regarding geothermal project development.
As Nicolai highlights, "Incorporating these seismic sections into our models gives us confidence in our geological interpretations by enhancing our data coverage by converting and incorporating non-digital data. That way we can make informed and better-qualified decisions that directly impact the success of our projects."
The Blueback Toolbox functionality that allows us to vectorize scanned images of 2D seismic sections is essential. Before we enter an area, we screen and assess all available data, and having this data seamlessly integrated into our digital workflows is crucial for our decision-making process.
Nicolai Andersen
Scalable solution for large projects
In terms of scale, Nicolai estimates that they have vectorized data for areas covering thousands of line kilometers of 2D seismic data, all supported by the Blueback Toolbox.
This wide-ranging coverage underscores the importance of having a robust tool to handle legacy data, particularly as Innargi’s geothermal projects often are located in geologically complex urban settings.
"Being able to digitize legacy seismic data ensures that we don’t miss out on any vital geological information. It’s incredibly useful when we’re assessing new project opportunities," Nicolai adds.
This capability not only ensures enhanced data coverage but also positions Innargi for future project success.
Streamlined, scalable workflows
A major advantage of Blueback Toolbox is its seamless integration with Petrel. This integration allows Innargi to maintain a simplified workflow, using a single software environment to manage both legacy and modern seismic data. The process of vectorizing and importing seismic sections is intuitive and efficient, reducing the time and effort required to incorporate legacy data into their models.
Nicolai notes that Blueback Toolbox was easy to adopt within the team, enabling faster onboarding and allowing geoscientists to focus on interpretation rather than technical hurdles.
Enhanced workflow, informed decisions
For Innargi, Blueback Toolbox is more than just a tool - it is a fundamental part of their workflow for managing legacy seismic data.
By streamlining the vectorization and integration of these essential datasets, Toolbox transforms historical, non-digital information into actionable insights that Innargi can leverage during their decision-making process.
As Innargi continues to expand its geothermal activities, Blueback Toolbox will remain a vital asset in unlocking the full potential of its historical data. This enhanced workflow, not only improves data accuracy but also directly contributes to more informed business decisions in geothermal exploration.
Learn more about the Blueback Toolbox >
*Petrel is a trademark of SLB
