Innovative thinkers

Vol. 232 No.7

Since his childhood days of playing with chemistry sets behind a curtain that read “Mad Scientist at Work,” Dr. Peter Duncan, founder and president of MicroSeismic Inc. has spent the last 40 years making the Earth’s subsurface his playground.

Early on, Duncan adopted the mindset of his father’s favorite quote by Lord Rutherford: “There’s only one science and that is physics. Everything else is stamp collecting.” While studying for his bachelor’s degree, Duncan took a summer job at a copper exploration project in Newfoundland and gained a scientific mentor who taught him about the equipment and how to reduce data. “This just resonated with my soul so much because it was toys for big boys, treasure hunting, it was outdoors and it was electronics and physics,” Duncan said.

After receiving a master’s degree and PhD in geophysics from the University of Toronto, Duncan went to work for Shell Canada’s mining division in 1978 and, shortly after, was moved into the company’s oil and gas division. “Because I was entirely ignorant about seismic, I was able to jump in and learn the science right when our industry was learning 3D,” Duncan said.

After supervising the acquisition and processing of Shell’s first offshore 3D survey in Canada at the Hibernia project, Duncan processed the data from a 3D seismic shoot offshore Nova Scotia at Glenelg field—one that took 18 boat months to cover the 400-sq-km area. “There was a single cable and air guns,” Duncan said. In order to do a velocity analysis on the Glenelg survey data, Duncan and his team essentially made a real-life 3D exhibit with some empty office space, dress racks and flip charts.  “We’d physically pick one up and move it to the next one and compare and then hang it up again in the right place,” Duncan said.

After Shell, Duncan went to work for Digicon Geophysical’s division ExploiTech, which was processing the Glenelg survey. Duncan and two co-founders did a leveraged buyout of ExploiTech and re-named the company 3DX Technologies. The trio built a non-operating oil business focused on 3D, which was still fairly unknown to operators.

In 1991, Duncan got a call from a gentleman who worked for a small operator out of Midland, Texas, who asked him, “If I give you $50,000, can you get me one of them there 3Ds? My banker tells me that he won’t give me no more money to drill wells until I’ve got me a 3D.” 3DX ended up shooting the 3D, and the company began to build up a strong client base, mostly via word of mouth.

After selling 3DX in 1999, Duncan came upon a unique new technology involving passive seismic. He founded MicroSeismic in 2003 with the idea of using a permanent array of near-surface geophones to record naturally occurring sound sources, like earthquakes, as well as to monitor fluid movement within.

Duncan quickly found that there was a market for his technology in hydraulic fracture monitoring. His approach also alleviated many of the problems with traditional downhole frac monitoring systems, including limited radius and a sensitivity to high temperatures. Using Duncan’s  permanent, life-of-field arrays, MicroSeismic has monitored 15,000 frac stages to date around the US and has installed 25 systems.

Recently, Duncan has gone back to the roots of his business to realize his next frontier: real-time 4D reservoir monitoring. His goal is to develop a full visualization of reservoir activity over time.

Aside from the “thrill of the hunt,” Duncan believes that patience is the key to success in his industry. He recently learned that Glenelg field—which he shot seismic for in 1982—just came online within the last few years. “It took 35 years from the initial discovery until they made penny one on that play,” Duncan said. “[That] has to give you a lot of respect for people who have the staying power to make something in this business.”  

nell.lukosavich@worldoil.com