Bill Goodway - 2013
Symposium Honoree Bill Goodway
Bill started life in what was then Bombay (now Mumbai) as the only child of a nomadic British ex-pat family. His first eight years were spent in paradise either at the beach or in the pool. However reality soon set in with an abrupt departure to obtain a proper education at a minor English Public School in Brentwood, Essex, UK. The transition from tropical India to frigid England was memorable as Bill had not yet experienced ice, snow or even temperatures much below 20°C except in the fridge and now he felt he was living in it! Brentwood was exceptionally miserable being an anachronism best described by former British Home Secretary Jack Straw a famous alumnus, in his new book 'Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor'. The one exception to the gloom at Brentwood was meeting Douglas Adams, the author of 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' and other popular books. In retrospect by his own account, Bill's interest in Physics probably started with his induction into the institution by Adams who was charged with showing him the ropes. Of course Adams was not famous at the time or at least not quite as famous, as there were already signs of his prodigious wit and humour. The inmates at Brentwood were totally isolated from the outside world except for a single TV show each week. The Head Master in his wisdom decided that the most educational choice at the time was a brand new sci-fi series entitled 'Dr. Who'. That was where Adams and Bill spent that first Saturday afternoon leading to Adams' meteoric rise to literary acclaim and Bill's more mundane future in science.
Having successfully completed numerous O and A levels (a grand total of 15) Bill was finally released from Brentwood in 1973 gaining entry into University College London to pursue a degree in either Geology or Physics, as Geophysics was not offered at a B.Sc. level. Bill chose Geology but was destined to end up working in Geophysics through an enduring love of Physics. Later in life being dissatisfied with a Geology degree while impersonating a geophysicist, he returned to university obtaining a Geophysics M.Sc. from the University of Calgary after what might be a record for the 13 years of course work.
Bill's career started in seismic acquisition surveying in the North Sea leading eventually to a transfer to Calgary in the early 80's. Soon after arriving in Calgary Bill joined PanCanadian Petroleum as a geophysicist and progressed to team leader of the Seismic Analysis Group. This was a considerable stroke of luck as the company had job stability and, through a very supportive management, encouraged Bill and his colleagues to accomplish some interesting, even ground breaking, applied seismology. Following the PanCanadian and AEC merger to form EnCana in 2002, Bill became Advisor for Seismic Analysis within the Frontier and New Ventures Group. After PanCanadian sold off all their lucrative offshore oil discoveries such as Buzzard in the North Sea, Bill moved to a domestic BU where through some enlightened collaboration he initiated and subsequently developed new applications of seismic to EnCana's overwhelming pursuit of unconventional shale-gas development.
In 2010 he ended his career with EnCana to join Apache as in his current role as Manager of Geophysics (Canada) and Advisor Senior Staff in the Exploration and Production Technology group based in Houston under the enlightened leadership of Dave Monk (Director of Geophysics) and Mike Bahorich (Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer). This role involves leading a small group of specialists working primarily on acquisition design and processing interaction for improved Quantitative Interpretation applied to both conventional exploration and unconventional play development throughout the Apache regions.
Bill continues to advance, develop and deploy technology used in all aspects of applied seismic exploration from acquisition design and processing to experimental special projects and new interpretation methods. He has presented and coauthored a number of papers at CSEG, EAGE, and SEG conventions and SEG research workshops on seismic acquisition, processing, borehole geophysics, anisotropy, multicomponent recording, AVO, and more recently, in combining estimates of reservoir stimulation from hydro-fracturing and passive microseismic surveys with 3D and 4D seismic.
Bill received CSEG's annual Best Paper Award both in 1994 and 1997, the CSEG convention Best General Paper award in 1996 and the CSEG convention Best Technical Paper award in 1997. In 2008, Bill was the recipient of the CSEG Medal and in 2009 he was selected as the SEG's Honorary Lecturer for North America. He is a member of CSEG, SEG, EAGE, APEGGA, past member of the SEG Research Committee as well as the current chair of TLE's editorial board. In addition, Bill was elected vice president and president of the CSEG for the 2002/2003 term.
