William Goodway - 2007
CSEG Medal Recipient Citation for William Goodway
by John Boyd
The CSEG Medal is the highest award that the Society bestows. It is given in recognition of the contribution to Exploration Geophysics by a member of the profession in Canada and can be gained through a long-standing significant contribution to the application, teaching or business development of Exploration Geophysics. It can also be gained through a single achievement in any of these areas, which has been recognized over a period of years as a significant development.
Accordingly, Bill Goodway could be awarded not one, but three CSEG Medals. The first medal would recognize his contribution to the application of geophysics through his publications and papers for the CSEG, SEG and EAGE over a period of more than fifteen years. He received best paper awards in three of those years. In 2000, he was invited to sit on the SEG Research Committee. He continues to present innovative material to the industry around the world.
The second medal would recognize his contribution, along with fellow employees at Pan Canadian, for the development of the Mega-Bin 3D seismic acquisition technique. Mega-Bin provides an advantage in its uniformity of wave field sampling and in its rapid build-up of stacking fold. "Mega-Bin Land 3D seismic: Toward a cost effective symmetric patch geometry", authored by Bill Goodway and Brent Ragan, was awarded best general paper at the 1996 CSEG convention.
The third medal would recognize what has perhaps been Bill's most important contribution. At the 1997 CSEG convention, along with Jon Downton and Taiwen Chen, he presented a landmark paper, entitled "Improved AVO fluid detection and lithology discrimination using Lamé Petro physical Parameters from P and S inversions". This proved to be a novel way of interpreting AVO data, and in the intervening ten years, the use of lambda-rho and mu-rho, commonly referred to as LMR, has become a technique used around the world and is one of the foundations of AVO analysis. Bill has continued to develop this interpretation technology which combines seismic data with geological and petrophysical analysis for detection and quantitative discrimination of high quality gas sand and carbonate reservoirs.
Bill himself has been a successful user of the technique and can point to his involvement in discoveries, nationally and internationally, where this technique was an important part of an exploration success.
Bill is a B.Sc. graduate in Geology from the University of London and an M.Sc. graduate in geophysics from the University of Calgary. He moved to Calgary from England with Sefel Geophysical in 1981, worked for Pulsonic and SSC before joining Pan Canadian Petroleum, where his work on Mega-Bin and LMR was supported by management and coworkers. He is presently an advisor in Exploration Seismic Technology at EnCana Corporation and continues to be an important technical mentor to his associates.
He has strongly supported the CSEG in conventions and workshops, has served as Vice President and President of the society and was instrumental in the formation of the CSEG Foundation.
Bill Goodway is well-respected in Calgary and internationally and is a highly deserving recipient of the CSEG Medal.
