We are seeking additional industrial partners.
The cost of participation is $150,000 per year.

For more information,
contact Jim Jennings.
 
 
 
 
Fluid-Rock-Seismic Technology (FRST )
The time is right, the tools are available, and the technologies and skills are in place to make step improvements in our assessment and ability to resolve and address the seismic detection of fine-scale reservoir and seal elements common in our subsurface reservoir settings.
The Partnership
FRST is an integrated geological, geophysical, and engineering research partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and participating oil companies that encourages technical consultation between academic and industrial experts and focuses its research effort on technical issues having the most practical significance and rapid technical transfer of research results.

Mission and Research
FRST will develop, test, and validate new, more fully integrated approaches and workflows that combine sedimentology, stratigraphy, rock properties, fluid-flow modeling, seismic-data acquisition methods, and advanced forward seismic modeling based on relevant outcrop analogs. We will develop new tools and approaches to improve our ability to resolve, assess, and better predict the role that detectable and subdetectable heterogeneities might have on reservoir performance. We envision a suite of outcrop models that will serve as a digital laboratory from which continued experimentation and analysis can be conducted.

This multiyear program will focus on the intensive characterization and seismic modeling of outcrop case studies to (1) establish and maintain an integrated team of geologists, geophysicists, and engineers; (2) develop and test an evolving workflow that has fundamental feedback loops between geology, geophysics, and reservoir modeling; and (3) construct outcrop-calibrated, real-world 3-D rock-property volumes for geophysical modeling experiments.

Research Institutions
Research at the Bureau of Economic Geology ranges from basic to applied, providing wide-ranging advisory, technical, informational, and research-based services to industries, nonprofit organizations, and Federal, State, and local agencies. With 58 full-time researchers and 22 part-time and contract researchers, the Bureau has become a recognized national leader in carbonate and clastic research, salt deformation, fractures, multicomponent seismic research, unsaturated zone hydrology, and coastal studies.

The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG), founded in 1972, is known internationally as a leading academic research center in geophysics and marine geology. UTIG conducts worldwide geophysical investigations of the history, structure, and dynamics of the Earth. Areas of research include tectonics, marine seismology and margin tectonics, ocean drilling, climate research, and computational geophysics. UTIG's permanent research staff includes 29 scientists.