Equinor (Canada)

Academic and professional disciplines form societies, associations, groups and networks to grow communities, build culture, create and share knowledge, develop and recruit talent, collaborate and advocate for its members. This article details the creation and initial development of a special interest group for Human Factors, specifically focused on high-risk safety-critical industries in Eastern Canada. The HFC Canada network was conceptualized by recognizing an opportunity for collaboration and Human Factors knowledge sharing among multidisciplinary stakeholders within the offshore energy and maritime sectors in Eastern Canada as they transitioned toward digitalized, remote, and autonomous operations. The impetus and underlying motivation is to foster collaboration and communication across key stakeholders and better understand their processes within these high-risk, safety-critical domains. This article details the initial formation of the network, operational structure and activities, including initial feedback and perspectives from different stakeholders, lessons learned, and future direction.

Satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are becoming increasingly valuable for marine operations in ice-affected environments. There are growing varieties of satellites, beam modes and other sensor parameters that are available, so there is a need to develop a universal method to compare the performance of satellite imagery for a given application. This paper introduces the concept of a confidence map for iceberg detection for the safety and efficiency of marine activities. By comparing the characteristics of a set of validated iceberg targets in SAR data with a new image, it is possible to assess what proportion of icebergs in a region may be detected. While the results are intuitive, they quantify the performance of satellite data for iceberg monitoring

ABSTRACT Point-bar deposits, although readily recognizable in most successions, are notoriously challenging to map and correlate accurately, particularly in the subsurface. Sedimentologic interpretations from microresistivity image logs, by contrast, offer an unparalleled method of accurately reconstructing point-bar architectural elements and mapping their distribution. Using an example from the Lower Cretaceous McMurray Formation, we demonstrate that the bedding dip profiles of stacked downstream migration, lateral accretion, and channel abandonment elements record the semicontinuous point-bar accretion of two erosionally juxtaposed large-scale channels. Microresistivity image-log analysis clearly demonstrates that bedding and architectural elements of these heterolithic point bars display discrete and predictable changes in dip angle and direction that are independent of autogenic variations in lithology. We advocate, therefore, that this approach be used to map the facies of point bars and predict their reservoir trends. The laterally accreted mud-sand couplets display a cyclic pattern that is consistent with a nonrandom recurring process. Based on the distribution of bioturbation in the mud beds and variations in sand-bed thicknesses, we argue that this recurring process was probably a monthly occurrence. By measuring the lateral-accretion bed thicknesses for what appears to be a 1-yr interval, a sedimentation rate of 86 cm/yr is estimated for these lateral-accretion beds. This deposition rate provides an upper limit required to deposit these point bars and improves the framing of the depositional model. We estimate that the two point bars in this study were each deposited over a period of a few hundred years.