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Image: The view towards the south-western part of Firda (this part is now known as ‘Sunnfjord‘) from the top of the mountain Skålefjellet (765 moh).

Fun-fact: I was born and raised in a small village named Stavang, situated at the westernmost base of this mountain.


Welcome!

You have now arrived at Firda Geo, the personal consulting company owned by me, Victor Aarre Madsen.


A quick intro:

I am recognized as world-leading expert on Seismic Interpretation technologies, including Reservoir Characterization and Reservoir Monitoring. A proven innovator, scientist, manager, author, software developer, teacher.

I worked for Schlumberger for almost 29 years (January 1995 – October 2023), the last 10 years at SETC Advisor Level – Geophysics.

On a scale from A – E … I achived a “B” performance rating (“Exceeds Expectations”) every single year of employment, including my last full year, with Schlumberger.

I am also perhaps the world expert on the science inside the Petrel Geophysics product, and I hold 15 granted US patents on parts of it. Petrel Geophysics is the world market leader for energy Exploration and Production (E&P), and much of the worlds energy reserves are found using the product. It is clearly of huge commercial value. You can read more about the Petrel Geophysics product here.

I have for the last year (August 2024-April 2025) consulted as “Geophysics Advisor” with Epam Systems Inc. This is a huge American technology company specializing in software engineering services, digital platform engineering and digital product design, operating out of Newtown, Pennsylvania. Key clients were:

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Services:

I offer these services, worldwide:

Consulting: geophysics and geology
Management: seasoned Project Manager and Coach
Software development: specializing in scientific code
Innovation: reinventing seismic reservoir imaging, interpretation, characterization and monitoring

More about these service offerings later … but, first, why this name for my company??


Firda:

Firda is the Old Norse (Viking) name of the district in Norway where I was born and raised.

Firda is also the general Old Norse equivalent of the modern Norse word ‘fjord’. It is cognate with both the Scots ‘firth’, and the English ‘ford’. It can refer to any sort of coastal bay in Scandinavian languages, not just a long narrow one. The original may have been an extension of ‘folk’ as a plural to refer to a region in the same manner as ‘Nordwegen’ (literally ‘the way North’) became a region. The root names of the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk (within the kingdom of East Anglia) evolved in the same way.

You can read more about the Old Norse history of my home district here.

Image: Firda seen from space. The shortest sailing route from Scandinavia to “The West” (Shetland, England, Iceland, America) is clearly from the Firda district.

Fun-fact: The first permanent settler on Iceland (which btw established his settlement in a place now known as “Reykjavik”) was a Viking from Firda. His name was Ingolfur Arnarson.

Image: The sea west of Firda (the North Sea) is also a prolific oil/gas region. The block you see in the center is the Troll reservoir. It is the largest oil/gas reservoir on the NCS (Norwegian Continental Shelf), which provides 11% of EU’s annual gas consumption (in 2024). You can read more about the Troll field here.

Fun-fact #1: We used the Troll seismic dataset (NH0301) for the development and benchmarking of the world’s first commercial AI/ML interactive Horizon Autotracker, now commercially available in Petrel. This was a suitable and challenging dataset, because the top reservoir horizon is both heavily faulted and also an unconformity (which means that the waveform is wildly varying laterally, and even has alternating polarity).

Fun-fact #2: I supervised an MSc student at NTNU in 2018. Her MSc project was to evaluate an early version of the ML/AI ‘IntelliTracker’ (as it was known then) using the Troll seismic dataset. You can find her MSc thesis here.


Geo (science):

Todo …


Publishing:

I have a large body of scientific work, including 20+ peer-reviewed conference proceedings, journal publications, book chapters, lectures and also 20+ patents, and my work has more than 450 scitations. You can find a comprehensive list of my published work here: Google Scholar

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You can find the list of all my 20+ patents here: Google Patents

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I have also given a substantial number of public lectures, in particular many organized by EAGE (the European Association of Geophysicists and Engineers). You can find recordings of many of my lectures here: YouTube


Finally, more about my Service Offerings:

Todo …



Contact Details:

Victor Aarre Madsen
(Owner/Chief Scientist)

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: Victor Aarre Madsen
Phone: (+47) 481 54 077
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