Open Choke

PART 2. How to Be A Big Music Star In the Future.

The facetious, but true answer, is to have been a big star in the past system.  If you were, you are a Golden Superman.  The reason for this is that music, peculiarly of all the arts, has the ability to transport us to a much better place, meaning our idealized past.  Crappy music makes you immediately recall a 7th grade dance, wrecking a car, getting.... oh well, enough of that.  You know what I mean.  Whoever was playing on the radio will always be memorialized, and the generation gap is more and more meaningless.

I mean, the hitmakers of the last 50 years are the luckiest individuals on earth.  Their songs are still played and they can still sell tickets, unlike any other popular music in the history of mankind.  Imagine, like I did last week, listening to a song recorded in 1926 in 1968 and having it part of your regular musical lexicon.  Jimi Hendrix, and the other fortunate old system lottery winners do this every day.  Of course, it is popular for them to blame the system for homogenizing the sounds, but it is exactly that homogenization of tastes that made them gazillionaires with lifestyles that would make Caligula blush.

The way for future artists?  Sign up with Disney or some other video/movie/TV conglomerate to mass market your stuff to a certain segment.  Of course, this isn't really proven to work except for the 6-12 year old girl market, one that is particularly fickle in their music buying habits and a market that doesn't have much nostalgia value.  No one is nostalgic of being a 10 year old.  16, maybe.  10 never.

No, I am afraid the serious artists of tomorrow are going to have to accept they won't sell out stadiums.  Stadium owners might factor this in for future long-term revenue predictions.  Without the old-style machine that created few, yet massive acts, the future will be regional acts that might get a little national play due to a movie soundtrack or some other mechanism.  They will be popular for a while where they live, and the decline curve of sales will mimic that of the old system, just with lots fewer units.  Of course, they are doing it for their art and not popularity, so no one will be a sell-out under this system.  They can still have sybaritic lifestyles, but the pickings will be regional and not supercharged with Bentleys or cash.  On a more positive note, it also means that our kids won't be incessantly preached at by Sting and Bono and others of their ilk who have been given some sort of special insight into the human condition, apparently via G4 jets and access to star-struck congressmen.  The big stars of tomorrow will be like the musicians I know today.  Day jobs after 23 or 24, some great memories, and a steady, if not life-supporting low decline sales over iTunes or their websites.

COMING NEXT- PART 3.  A Surefire Method On How To Write A Hit Song. 

How To Write Hit Songs, or Another Discourse on Something I Have No Direct Knowledge About...

I am a big fan of XM Radio.  Or SiriusXM. Or Whatever it's called.  Siriusly.

You have to be when you are an American Oil and Gas Producer.  Tuning in and out of local radio stations during your regular 200 mile drives is a pain the ass.  For those of us that spend plenty of time in the American Outback, otherwise known as "The Land OUTSIDE Major Metropolitan Areas", XMSirius, like Wal Mart, is a Godsend. 

In any case, I created my theory of Hit Songwriting listening to hours of XMSirius and pondering the world while driving mile after lonesome mile of the proverbial highways and byways of west, east, and south Texas.  I am now making my extensive wisdom available to anyone that Googles this.  Free of charge.  Worth every penny you paid.

First, let me lay out my general thesis.  The basic business dynamic of Music is over, and we are transitioning into something brand new.  This isn't a particularly striking or new insight, especially from a middle aged fat white oilman.  We have skinny curly headed genii like Malcolm Gladewell that tell us the same thing.  

The old model, where "artists" signed with record companies to record, manufacture, and distribute the albums in return for a signing bonus (usually recoverable from the sales royalty) and a royalty on sales amounting to a few percent, not unlike the oil and gas operator and land owner dynamic, except that musicians actually have to do something other than sign a contract, and musicians get a lot less in general for their intellectual property as a percentage than royalty owners get for their mineral property.  

The record company then works with the radio stations to create demand for their product.  That radio was the great hand of Allah in defining who would be a star or not is reflected in the fact that radio stations haven't ever had to pay royalties on songs played.  In fact, they have a sordid history of having been paid to play songs!

The result was a small number of stars who then made a ton of money, selling out venues everywhere because the system was set up to create "big wells" so to speak.  Small wells weren't worth the operating costs.  Kind of like Saudi Arabia.

The internet and various digital technologies changed this dynamic fundamentally and altogether.  No longer did it cost an arm and a leg to record, because you could buy for a few hundred bucks the kind of digital equipment that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  You also didn't have to manufacture anything for each seperate copy of the music to stored on like an album, or tape or CD. You also didn't have to figure out how to transport all of this crap to thousands of stores all over the country.  Lastly, radio isn't the only game in town in defining what is good or bad or driving taste.  All this has been "democratized" for lack of a better word.  Any grade schooler can now do what a record company used to do, which means that at least SOME bands can do it as well.

The best oilfield analogy to this would be to think what would happen if it only cost $500 dollars to drill and test a well, and only another $500 to complete it?  Although operators might get excited at first, this little change would mark their demise, since the tools and capability to directly produce hydrocarbons would be placed in the hands of the mineral owners directly.

So what does the future hold for musicians and bands?  

You will have to wait for my next post!  And yeah, I haven't given away my secret to songwriting yet either.  But don't worry.  It's coming....

NEXT:  How to be a BIG MUSIC STAR in the future.

Tudor Pickering Take On Berman...

The following was sent to me by email by Tudor Pickering as part of their analyst opinions.  In my mind, Tudor Pickering is THE Cadillac analyst shop.  Real engineers, Holditch acolytes, etc.

 Putting the Skeptics shale hypothesis to permanent rest ($4.50/mcf) TPH E&P Research Team

 

·         Taking the high road – After much internal debate, we have opted to take the high road and not call out these shale skeptics by name.  While it would make us feel better, it would probably give more credibility and attention to some individuals than is warranted.  

 

·         The calm before the storm.  First, let us say that this is not a personal attack on these skeptics.  We’ve met them.  They seem like nice folks.  While we believe their analysis is incorrect in almost every way, we do believe that they are sincere in their efforts.  With those niceties out of the way, let’s put our cards on the table.  We were willing to let sleeping dogs lie in our disagreement with their conclusions.  The world is made up of differing opinions and the beauty is that the market is efficient in sorting them out (for example, it was pretty quiet in February from the $200/bbl oil crowd).  However, we simply get too many questions about these skeptic’s work to ignore it…particularly since a recent Denver presentation questioned our own work on the topic.  Two can play this game..and we say GAME ON! 

 

·         Technical credentials.  In any technical discussion, one must establish technical credibility.  The TPH equity research team is staffed with engineers that have worked at Shell, Tenneco, Arco, Exxon Mobil, reservoir consultant Holditch & Associates and reserve auditor Netherland & Sewell.  Dave Pursell has taught petroleum engineering courses at Texas A&M.  Not only do our guys know words like non-linear flow and pseudo-steady-state..they actually understand what they mean.  We’ve done decline curve work for 10-20 years.  Our A&D team on the ibanking side has another group of engineering talent just like us – and they make technical assessments of reserves for a living.  We know how to do this type of work.  

 

·         Depth of analysis on this topic.  Within the past six months, we’ve looked at 32 subsegments of US production, including individual analyses of various historical shale results (Barnett, Fayetteville, etc).  The culmination of the analysis was our US Natural Gas Supply Study.  We’ve got data coming out of our ears…we haven’t published it all (and won’t), but it confirms the technical work being done by literally hundreds of industry folks.   

 

10 Reasons Why Skeptics Are Wrong:

 

1. Technical stuff matters – The skeptics claim Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) in shales is much lower than stated by industry, analysts and reserve engineers.  This is because their decline method is technically flawed and is biased to under-estimate recovery.  They suggest that it is appropriate to assume Barnett Shale wells exhibit exponential decline after one year (and not apparent hyperbolic behavior).  Reality – it takes many years for a very tight (low permeability) gas reservoirs to exhibit exponential decline behavior.  Thus, hyperbolic decline can and should be used to approximate/extrapolate EUR’s.  Whew – got through that explanation without a mind numbing discourse of transient vs. pseudo-steady-state flow.

 

2. Type Curves work – Skeptics further suggest that it is inappropriate to use type curves because it makes the data look smoother than it really is…and suggest that all wells should be analyzed individually.  This is wrong for multiple reasons: (1) It is accurate/widely accepted to use normalized curves as long as there is a relatively stable well count and vintage/area effects are accounted for.  (2) Projecting individual wells without checking the type curve trends will lead to overly pessimistic projections (see Reason #4).  Type curves actually normalize for a negative bias that might be driven by individual well declines.   (3) Reserve auditors project EUR’s on a by-well base…supplemented with type curves.  Their by-well analysis is consistent with the type curve methods reported by companies.  The answer is generally the same either way if the work is done correctly!

 

3. High Terminal Decline Rate is wrong – Skeptics state that terminal declines will be high in shale plays (>15%).  Without 10-20 years of Barnett history (the oldest shale play), this cannot be disproved.  However, there are literally thousands of data points (actual well production) that show low terminal decline rates in tight gas reservoirs.  Read the technical papers.  Look at the data.  Enough said.

 

4. Reality bites - We loaded the skeptics Barnett ~1bcf EUR type curve (which are called optimistic) into our Barnett Shale model.  We applied their type curve to the ~3,000 wells drilled in 2008.  During 2008, actual Barnett production grew by 1.2bcf.day.  The skeptics “optimistic” EUR curve estimated growth of only 0.7bcf.day – which says it underpredicted actualincremental production by 0.5bcf/day or 70%.  This is only for one year.  If we went back to 2005/2006 and applied the type curve to all Barnett wells drilled, there is NO WAY this low type curve would match actual Barnett production of 5bcf/d.  Scoreboard!

 

5. Like a fine wine, wells can get better over time – Skeptics also indicate that Barnett well performance has not improved over time.  Au contraire, mon frère!  In the Barnett and Fayetteville, reported well production shows higher y/y rates and higher projected EURs due to improved technology and better understanding of the reservoir (its called a learning curve).  The skeptics decline-curve methodology (assuming the wells exhibit exponential behavior after one year) biases newer wells to have lower EUR’s than older/mature wells.  Industry has shown consistent positive performance-based revisions in shale plays…wells get better and reserves increase over time.

 

6. Peak rate IS a good indicator of EUR – Skeptics are incorrect in stating that there is no correlation between peak rate and EUR because his decline curves/EUR’s are wrong.  Clearly, peak rates alone shouldn’t be used to forecast EURs, but we find on average a strong correlation between IP and EUR (a widely accepted premise in tight gas analysis).   Read the technical papers.  Look at the data.  Enough said again.

 

7. Economic new math – Skeptics also believe that the Barnett/Fayetteville will recover less gas than people think (and by extrapolation, other shales like the Haynesville will also disappoint).  With less gas from shales, the marginal costs of supply will be high – some skeptics say as high as $8/mcf.  We agree that if shale disappoints, gas prices will be quite high.  Yet some skeptics run economic analysis of shales at $4/mcf gas prices..to prove that the Barnett is uneconomic.  Circular logic here (queue Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers – Erroneous! Erroneous!).  If recovery is low and prices are therefore high..you MUST use the higher price when evaluating shale economics.

 

8. Data Quality? Skeptics rely on Barnett monthly data reported to the Texas RRC.  Because of the high amount of downtime in the Barnett due to completing offsetting wells, high line pressures, and other issues early in production, monthly data biases lower estimates of recovery.  For these periods, the Texas RRC reports look artificially low because they reflect only partial months of production.  The daily production data shows a much different story…CHK’s Analyst Day presentation shows this clearly.

 

9. Collusion?  No.  You, sir, are simply wrong – Skeptics discuss a conspiratorial angle and incorrectly suggests there is collusion between E&P companies, Wall Street analysts and engineering companies: “E&P companies that claim success, investment companies that promote their stock and activities, and engineering companies that certify assets must be held accountable for their conclusions…”  We’re plenty happy to be held accountable for our conclusions..we publish them daily.  The skeptics conspiracy angle is categorically wrong.  The truth is much less sensational.  Simply, many people representing hundreds of companies analyze the data and come to a different conclusion.  It is laughable to think that: A) thousands of people are conspiring to make the Barnett/Fayetteville seem better than it is or B) all of these people are just incompetent.

 

10. Don’t go away mad…just go away – One skeptic stated that “Lack of material response either means they do not take my position seriously, or they do not contest it”.  A Chihuahua can only bark at a bull dog for so long before the bull dog snaps back.  And the dogs are snapping.  Look at the BILLIONS of dollars being invested in shale activity.  The industry is responding with its actions every single day.  We are responding with this report.  NO MAS!

Toasted Shales

A Guest Editorial from "The Blacksmith", a fellow oil and gas man and operator...

“There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damn lies and statistics.”

 

Mark Twain

 

Recently it was noted that there are over ten times more bacterial and fungal cells on or in the average human - than there are human cells! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flora)

 

Along comes a statistician, let’s call him Bob.  Now Bob went to a good school, he’s a good public speaker, and he keeps his shoes shiny.  All-in-all, Bob is a pretty credible guy.  Bob works with a fellow named Billy Red.  Billy’s a good guy too, but he’s in the kangaroo business and frankly, he’s a little miffed that humans are getting all the attention these days!  Nevertheless, Bob is able to maintain his objectivity. Bob looks at the above discovery, does the math again himself, and states his conclusion, “Humans are not humans at all - they are bugs and mold!”  “Why do you say that?”, someone asks.  “Well, over half the cells on the subjects analyzed are bugs and mold, so therefore humans must be … bugs and mold!”, Bob replies.

 

Bob goes on to say, “Look, I wish it weren’t so.  All I do is look at the FACTS.  I’d be happy to go over this with anyone.  I truly wish I was wrong.”  What could be more reasonable?

 

Along comes Sam.  Sam is a noted biologist with a long, distinguished career.  In fact, Sam is currently director of the biological survey for his adopted state.  Sam’s state mainly has birds, not humans.  Over the years though, Sam has known a few humans and he’s found them, well … a little weird!  Sam’s impressed with Bob, and believes he’s telling the truth.  Sam recommends Bob and Bob’s work, and he goes on to exclaim, “Y’all better pay attention to what Bob has to say.”  And so it goes that Bob’s credibility grows, and it’s not looking good for humans remaining to be classified as humans …

 

Who’s telling the truth here?  What are the facts?  Are humans, humans?  Or are they bugs and mold?

 

As you can see, statistics don’t always tell the whole story.  In fact, in this complicated world we can get badly misled if we limit our analyses to simple, reductionist statistics.  Statistics can be quite helpful – but only if they are used in parallel with a full and correct understanding of all the available objective and subjective data.

 

Unfortunately, in this complicated world none of us has time to become “expert” on all things.  As a result, we are forced to rely on simplifications or summaries done by others.  Problems can ensure if those we are relying on have not gathered and correctly analyzed the requisite data, but instead have made statistical observations based on incomplete data or analyses.  Further, in some cases it may not even be possible to come to a correct conclusion – even with all of the available data and the best analysis!  The danger of statistics lies (pun intended) in the fact that statistics ALWAYS yield a numerical answer – an answer which may be premature, convoluted or just plain wrong.

 

So, statistics are not facts at all; rather, statistics are just numbers that may - or may not - represent a realistic analysis of a situation.

 

The Complexity of Shale Plays

Various rock parameters are required in order for a geographical portion of a given of a shale play to “work”.  Just like the rock you see on the side of the road, these parameters vary across an area.  We humans tend to subdivide things into convenient, already-existing “buckets”.  In the case of land areas, counties are already defined, so we might say Blah County is “good”, and Blah Blah County is “not good”.  The fact is, even in a play where 40 counties are “good”, there are always the “edges” - with “edges” representing the transitions between “good” and “not good”. 

 

The noted Marcellus Shale expert, Dr. Terry Engelder of Penn State, has come up with the useful analogy of “toast” to explain the important shale gas geochemical parameter known as thermal maturity (sometimes referred to as Ro or Tm).  In his slide show, Dr. Engelder shows partially cooked toast, charred toast, and toast that looks like it was cooked “just right”.  The genius of this analogy is that we can all relate to properly cooked toast!

 

As it turns out, rock parameters don’t necessarily honor the county lines we have drawn.  So, on the “edges” of a play part of a county may be perfectly cooked toast, and part of it may be burned toast!  How do we find these edges?  Sometimes data exists, but often it is spotty or undependable for whatever reason.  Sometimes two analysts can look at the same data and come up with two different answers. Sometimes two analysts can come up with … five different answers!  Also, rock parameters don’t follow straight lines on a map; they curve around – in here, out there. 

 

So, often we have to find the edges the hard, expensive way - we have to drill multi-million dollar wells.  And sometimes even when Company X thinks they know where the edge is, Company Y doesn’t have that same data.  So, Company Y may wind up drilling a non-commercial well in an area that Company X had already condemned as “not good”.  In this case, Company Y is viewed with disfavor.  Given the full alphabet of companies out there, and given the infinitely curvy lines of rock parameters, there can be a lot of failed efforts along an “edge”.  All these failed efforts can go into a statistical exercise that views a given portion of a given shale play in a simplistic way.  Should the play in general, and Company X in particular, be condemned for the actions of Company Y and its alphabet brethren?

 

On the other hand, sometimes Company Y may have the same data as Company X, but Company Y thinks the data is suspect, or incomplete, or just has a different interpretation.  So, in this case, Company Y takes the risk and drills a successful, multi-million dollar well.  Company Y becomes a hero and in fact by extending the play in this direction, Companies Z, A, B - and even Company X - may benefit!  Meanwhile, the royalty owners in this new area and the schoolchildren of that state (who sometimes get the benefits from the production taxes paid by Company Y and its royalty owners) become major beneficiaries of Company Y’s “guts”.  Such is the nature of the oil and gas exploration business in unconventional shale plays!   

Reserves Concubine

Basically, I am a reserves whore.  I like deals that have the opportunity to get Big Reserves.  I don't like deals where the biggest amount you get is a well-worth of hydrocarbons.  Even when they are low risk.  

Why?  Because "low risk" deals still have a ton of risk.  If you are going to take the risk, then shoot at something other than ants.  Ant taxidermy is really unsatisfying.

You know who taught me this lesson?  The legendary Dallas wildcatter Duke Rudman.  You know what else?  He didn't die broke.  Once he made his taw, he kept it and grew it drilling for big stuff.  No one-well deals for him, either.

Everything I have learned the hard way tells me that resource plays are the place to be, and that we are damned fortunate to live in a time when we are just now recognizing what they are.  Why?  The very hardest part of the old oil and gas patch was finding the friggin' hydrocarbon.  The big stuff was long gone.  The New Oil and Gas Patch, the one that recognizes Resource Plays, has NO hydrocarbon risk.  It is just engineering risk.  How do we get it out.  20 years ago, we didn't even know how to get this stuff to flow at all.  A decade ago, we didn't know how to flow this stuff at more than minimal rates.  Today, we are arguably at least breaking even at a cost/price balance that may be achievable in many plays.

The prize?  Not some dollar swap like a one well old-style deal, but the ability to own reserves that could be 10, 100, even 1000 million barrels of oil equivalent.  Product in place that can exceed 3 or 4 million barrels  of oil equivalent per section.  C'mon.  What's NOT to like?  Unlike some, I trust human ingenuity to come up with ways to produce this stuff economically.  This is an entirely different level of risk than NOT HAVING HYDROCARBONS PRESENT at all!

So, while everyone gets hysterical, and some folks, like Arthur Berman, create a name for themselves telling people things they want to hear, because it fits into their larger points of view on government mandates and controls, I am going to bet that we can produce the significant hydrocarbons that we have already PROVEN exist and that we have already PROVEN we can produce.  All we are dealing with now is bringing down costs, and whoever figures that out the best has literally trillions of dollars of resource that can be turned into reserves.  

So I ask again, what's not to like?  Why are we so scared that these plays are crappy?  If you feel that way, then don't buy acreage, don't drill wells, and don't buy stock in companies that think differently.  Pretty simple and best of all, purely voluntary!

That's a hell of a lot more than I can say about those that want to exploit the "non-economics" of these plays today to help usher in a new era of prohibition over exploiting American oil and gas...

Yc:rk (umlaufed u on its side, 'cause I don't know how to do it here)

In a bold statement about what is important to the Norwegian Academy, Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Ostrom, a political scientist, has spent her career defining how collectives should best manage the commons.  According to Wikipedia

"Ostrom's work has highlighted how humans have created diverse institutional arrangements over natural resources for thousands of years that have prevented ecosystem collapse. Yet, Ostrom is quick to point out that, while successes are abundant, humans are also responsible for countless ecosystem collapses. Her current work emphasizes the multifaceted nature of human-ecosystem interaction and argues against any singular "panacea" attempt to solve individual social-ecological system problems."

Not to take away from Dr. Ostrom's work, which I am sure is interesting, the fact that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences deems the collective this important seems so..... Swedish.  Ikea might have been a better choice.  How do they make that stuff so cheap?  In a cradle to grave nanny state country? Now THAT seems fit for a Nobel Prize in Economics. Unless they make those umlaufed items in China...

All You Need To Know...

I have had probably 500 people work for me in some fashion since I left the tit of Big Oil and I have read dozens of management books that have been pushed on me by various of those 500 that, perhaps charitably, felt they were doing me a favor.  I can sum up it all up in two simple concepts.  I don't need to fluff it up to 150 pages, like I would if I were trying to sell a book.

Concept 1. Under promise and over deliver.  Psychologically speaking, exceeding people's expectations wins over providing more any day.  By straw man example, if you tell someone you will GIVE them $10k in a month, versus telling them you will buy them dinner by Friday, if you buy dinner EVERY DAY until Friday, you will have created charitable feelings and goodwill.  If, in a month and a half, you GIVE the person $5k when you promised them $10k, you will be seen as the guy who snaked them out of $5k. Really!  

The reality- You got $5 frigging thousand dollars for nothing!  And you think the guy who gave it to you is a crook, when, in fact, the guy is amazingly charitable.  But by over promising and under delivering, he entirely negated the goodwill he should logically receive.

The other reality- You got a couple of hundred dollars in meals when you were expecting maybe 25 bucks in meals.  The guy who gave you THOSE is Mother Theresa with a penis...

Simple and Absolutely True.  Not logical, but a fold in the human psyche... our need for dependability.  Also, Timeliness is critically important.  Do it when or before you said you would do it. 

Concept 2.  Be Self Aware and Only Hire Self Aware People.  This is the most important attribute of any human being.  Great people handicap themselves hugely by not knowing what they suck at, and then spend all their time doing stuff they suck at.  I have always been a sucker for the Super Genius types.  How many of you have known that type?  Have you ever wondered why they are rarely rich or even rarely functional human beings?  Because most of these types have gaping chasms in other skills.  The problem is, they think they are Super Genii, and therefor they are right on everything, even though life experience should have suggested otherwise.  These are the people that stir up the pot, the people that set up the t-ball and then club their team mates.  If they were just self aware about what they did not do good, they could rule the world by finding folks that CAN do those things well.  Not good team mates.  

These are the types that value their ego over personal or corporate success.  As a friend said, they "would rather be right than rich".  Since you aren't running an organization with the primary goal of validating other peoples BS, this means that THAT horse is only coincidentally pulling in the same direction that you are, and rarely can that be sustained.

Learning to identify this early can save you a lot of heart and head aches.  Just ask them... "What are your weaknesses?"  If they say "None", run away.  If they give you a bunch of trivial stuff, maybe walk away briskly.

It took me 18 years of management experience to learn each of these the hard way, from both sides of the equation...

Seismic Data and its Role in Unconventional Plays

Scott, a regular reader and contributor to this blog, has asked how seismic data plays a role in unconventional plays.  It is a great question, because these unconventional plays are so valuable and cool because EVERY location is drillable, so why spend any money on seismic data?  

Every one of these plays is different, so seismic data will play a different role in each.  No one-line answers, I am afraid.

Isopachal/isochronal thickness of the shale (microbasins etc) can have a big impact on high-grading wells. Nearly all these plays depend on a decent supply of source rock being present.  Broad use for this technique in all plays. 

Maximum and minimum curvature analysis as originally developed by the geophysical consortium at University of Houston is a more exotic use, but has the benefit of being applicable to old and new shooting alike.  This is a great first order use of seismic to high grade locations because a well bore placed along an area of maximum curvature will get exponentially more bang for the buck from its frac job than one placed in an area of minimum curvature.  You are getting Mother Nature to stress that rock for you so that the little tap of the hammer will shatter the whole mass. http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:PfTqcO7P6BEJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en

Multiazimuth analysis, a subtle technique where wide azimuth shooting geometries are really necessary, so not always applicable on older 3-D surveys, is done by analyzing the differential signal coming into the geophones from a wide variety of source/receiver azimuths.   The idea is that the seismic signal is attenuated as it crossed fractures as opposed to being in the fracture plane. In plays like the Barnett and Fayetteville, this is used to avoid natural fractures that can plumb into deeper waters, while in the Austin Chalk, perhaps Marcellus, and certainly the Rockies unconventional gas and oil plays fracture swarms are sweet spots.  http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=SPE-103857-MS&soc=SPE

Impedence Inversion is a technique where you attempt to remove the sine wave from the seismic data an leave you with the impedance section.  Think of an impedence section as a combination density and sonic log, where you don't know exactly what contribution each has to the log curve.  If you have real sonic and density logs to constrain it, then you can make a guess at the sonic and density response of each layer of rock, and thus some estimates at lithology and/or porosity.  This is a simple technique, but it is iterative and takes am experienced practitioner to get it right.  This can be valuable when you are trying to detect a particular rock property that drives production, like a low-density zone.  The Haynesville and the Eagleford are targets for this technology.  This is still what we call "underdetermined" because we are trying to quantify rock velocity and density with one measurement.  www.ireservoir.com/Download.../Boonsville_gOcadUsersMtng.pdf

Elastic Inversion expands the impedance inversion by applying it with offset.... using AVO characteristics to help add in fluid/gas presence.  Really an interesting technique but dependent on well log constraints.  This is still an "underdetermined" system but by using different "slices" of the data, it gets us closer.   www.ifptraining.com/eng/catalogues/an2009/explo/int0331.pdf  http://www.geoenergycorp.com/services/InverSeis/

Last and Most and Least Robust would be the following:

Converted Wave Elastic Inversion, where shear waves are recorded but not generated, and AVO of the compressional and the P-SV wave are calculated.  This is a "determined" system but many issues remain unresolved in creating an earth model, since travel times are very different, and the whole processing philosophy between the two are different... common depth or mid point versus common conversion point, then run through a depth migration.  Hard to compare apples and oranges here.

Full Waveform Elastic Inversion, where both shear and compressional waves are generated and detected and the AVO characteristics of each applied.  This is the only "overdetermined" data set and has the benefit of having both processed via similar CDP or CMP methods, but still containing the data set integration difficulties that come from data sets that don't time match.  The Full Waveform Elastic Inversion process is quite complicated, requires real and rare expertise, but is the only way to really interpret full wave form seismic data and reduce it to an earth model.

Both of the above can detect fractures very robustly, can detect changes in lithology, changes on porosity, and can even solve the old fizz water problem with AVO (a reservoir with only 5-10% gas will light up like a 90% charged reservoir).  Both however, are double or more the acquisition cost, and 5 times the processing cost and time.  They also require new data.  A more cost effective way would be to get what you can from the existing datasets using the various techniques described.   http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=SEGEAB000026000001001039000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

As Bubba said in Forrest Gump.... "That's about all".

Sojers Shoont Vote

Huge efforts over the last couple of years on the part of the Democratic Party to NOT disenfranchise the vote of those without identification.  "Every vote must count" as the critically concerned Americans that fight so hard over this basic human right say.

That is, except if you wear a military uniform.  Apparently, these same defenders of democracy hold an equally strong position that Soldiers overseas do NOT have a right to get a ballot BEFORE or WHEN an election is held.  Interesting.  I guess absolutes and consistency are only the realm of Sith Lords.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20566370/Virginia-Board-of-Elections-filings-in-McCainPalin-v-Cunningham-Memo-9109

Predatory...

Do you, like most 'Mericans, believe in your soul of souls that companies typically use what is known as Predatory Pricing?   This refers to the practice of a big company selling its goods below cost in an effort to drive out weaker competition and then raising prices when the competition is gone?

Cato Institute releases a study where it looked at all manners of Predatory Pricing accusations over the last 35 years and found that in all cases, it was alleged by the higher cost providers who were attempting to get the Government into fixing higher consumer prices to protect them.  Expand that to international trade, especially "White vs. Brown" countries, you have a nice, xenophobic stew.  The reality is that Predatory Pricing is an irrational business strategy that permanently destroys markets and decimates market size.  Read the full report and tell us what you think...

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-169es.html#