Zbynek is a passionate geologist. After several field seasons in the Cantabrian Mountains for his PhD thesis, his first industry job led him to the Libyan desert. Having passed the furnace stage, he was sent to Norway for water-proofing and cooling. Zbynek leads our stratigraphic and sedimentological services, based on image logs and cores. From the main office in Stavanger he also coordinates sales and marketing for the Eriksfiord group.
Birger Hansen began his geology career in Greenland mapping for the Survey. His M.Sc. work on granulite facies of Nordre Stroemfjord was followed up with experimental and thermodynamic studies at Manchester University. After the Ph.D. in 1981 he started his oil career at Statoil where he built reservoir models and processed dipmeter logs. Noticing that structural geology methods could be applied to sedimentary structures led to the foundation of Z&S Geologi in 1985 and the development of borehole image interpretation methods. In 2001, he created Eriksfiord AS, where he was soon joined by old and new colleagues.
In 2018 he handed the company over to younger colleagues.
Christian Ottesen has functioned as manager for borehole image interpretation teams since 1989.
“Despite the astonishing detail of a borehole image, it is only scratching the surface, and there is an awful lot of rock behind it which we will never see except in the eyes of our imagination. I enjoy receiving the most horribly complicated structural data from oil companies, in order to, gradually over a period of days or months, puzzle everything together to a logically coherent history of basin evolution and deformation. The model may not represent the total truth, but at least honors the observations and reflects real geological processes”. -Christian Ottesen
Bernd contributed to most of the geological applications modules of Recall® (Halliburton/Landmark) during his time at Z&S: Speed correction, interactive spherical statistics, geomechanical interpretation. As leader of the “numerical” team, he was ensuring a consistent high quality of commercial image processing. At PGS and Landmark, he built the interface between the Petrobank (Oracle) database and Recall, and worked as Dev-Lead on R&D projects such as the Java DecisionSpace® platform. Bernd is now developing the business of the Eriksfiord group in the Americas, and building specialized software to support our geology and geomechanics interpretation staff.
“Spherical statistics for paleocurrent and structural analysis, matrix algebra and quadratic forms in geomechanics. There are infinitely many interpretation methods waiting to be implemented by mathematicians who have the latest software development tools available. It gives me a thrill to make mathematics useful to my curious team-mates and demanding clients.”
– Bernd Ruehlicke
The directional statistics used in rock magnetism are similar to those we use in the analysis of subsurface structures, be they of deformational or depositional origin. At Eriksfiord, I work with deformation of rocks, a) in the form of visibly accomplished geological structures and b) as structural geology waiting to happen, also known as geomechanics.
For the Central Europe representation of Eriksfiord, I have chosen a location close to Heidelberg, for good contact to the world of academic geoscience, and to Frankfurt, for efficient communication to oilcompany and wellsite locations around the world.
Subsurface geologists never get to see the rocks we work on, and are every day forced to accept multiple possible explanations of our observations, ever more complex as data acquisition technology develops. Quoting Douglas Adams: “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
