The Acoustics Special Interest Group has been formed in accordance with the SPWLA bylaws and has been ratified/approved by the committee.  The purpose of the SIG is to promote the science and application of borehole acoustics within the wider petrophysical community and to provide an open forum for members to discuss the latest developments within the field.

Borehole acoustics has grown significantly in technology and applications since the early days in the 1960's. It now encompasses a wide field of disciplines within geophysics, petrophysics, geomechanics and well integrity, and the technology has developed from the simple early tools to today’s complex, full-waveform wireline and LWD devices.  Modern borehole acoustics deals with the excitation, detection and interpretation of multiple types of propagating arrivals to determine a diverse set of information about the formations surrounding the borehole including porosity, lithology, fluid typing, rock mechanical properties, anisotropy, stress state, pore pressure, permeability, fracture analysis and more.  It also covers cased hole evaluation, both formation measurements through casing and cement evaluation.  The field has recently even expanded beyond the near wellbore, to image events far from the wellbore itself and moved outside of traditional oil and gas applications, such as becoming a key part of successful CCUS projects.

The Acoustics SIG is a community of people from a wide variety of disciplines within both the oil and gas and alternative energy communities, who all share a common interest in the science of borehole acoustics. Our membership ranges from those with just a technical curiosity to those who are specialists in the field, and includes members from academia, governmental organizations, and the corporate world.  We are open to people of all backgrounds and there are no fees associated with joining the SIG, although we obviously encourage you to also join the SPWLA. There is sometimes a registration fee to attend meetings to offset the cost of meeting facilities/meals.  We endeavor to meet once every two months, as well as to have periodic workshops.

This is a borehole geophysics topic that has been evolving in the last several decades with the objective of detecting and characterizing sub-seismic geology within tens of meters around the well. Downhole tools on Wireline and Logging While Drilling platforms produce high-resolution, deep reading measurements, enabling accurate well placement and better reservoir description. Technologies include deep electromagnetic inversion, sonic imaging, borehole gravity, and others. Many successful applications have been developed and used globally to address drilling and characterization issues. At the same time, progress and adoption by operators have been slow in some areas. This workshop will look at where we are and explore what is needed to speed up adoption and broaden applications.

For Registration, full agenda, location details and presenter abstracts and bio's - click the Event Page link above