John Boyd - 2014
John Boyd is a worthy honoree of the 2014 CSEG Symposium; not only is he a man of accomplishment, of service to his society, and his profession, an entrepreneur, a mentor, and a leader, he is one of the progenitors of modern interpretation methods. John’s career spans the analogue and the digital. John has been involved in the intensely technical, the business side of running a company, as well as the regulatory aspects of our business. His volunteer commitments are similarly broad: he has been a CSEG president, but also an APEGA board member and a UNESCO volunteer.
John has worked on most of the continents of the world as a geophysicist. His experience ranges from oil and gas to mining and potash. He was involved in making some of the first basin scale regional geophysically oriented cross-sections of the WCSB. John was one of the first users in the world of synthetic seismograms and promoted a disciplined and scientific approach to seismic interpretation. John Boyd was also one of the early users and interpreters of 3C seismic data, and spearheaded some of the seminal joint industry-University of Calgary CREWES projects. John has not only ridden the many waves of change in our industry, he has taken the initiative to chart the best course through them as an interpreter and leader. As we head deeper into the new waters of unconventional reservoir interpretation, the many lessons from John’s experience as a geophysicist are of particular interest to us all.
Biography of John Boyd, P.Geoph.
John graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A.Sc. in Geophysics. He worked for Amoco in Canada from 1960 to 1966 on a variety of exploration projects in Western Canada. Mr. Boyd became involved in the early days of seismic processing and joined IBM Canada in 1969 to work on the design and sales of geophysical software. He joined Digitech in 1970 as Assistant Manager of their processing centre in Sydney, Australia and moved to London in 1971 to set up a U.K. subsidiary. This office provided contract seismic processing for North Sea and for European and African land seismic operations. Digitech also provided a contract processing group for British Petroleum's seismic processing centre in BP’s London head office.
During his 5 years in London, Mr. Boyd visited Warsaw, Krakow, Tehran and Bucharest to present seminars on computer application for geology and geophysics.
Mr. Boyd returned to Canada in 1976 to Digitech's head office. In 1977 he established Boyd Exploration Consultants Ltd., retired as President at the end of 2006 and continued as a Director and Senior Consultant. The company currently has a staff of 27 employees, including11 professionals.
