Cycle Time Reduction and Integration - Seismic to Simulator

Hamish A.M. Wilson* and Olivier S. E. Van Belle
Paras Ltd., UK
*[email protected]

The industry continues to search for ways to increase productivity and reduce overall finding and production costs. Integrated processes are critical to achieving the necessary productivity gains. The seismic to simulator process is fundamental to reservoir management. Huge gains have been achieved in the time taken to rebuild a reservoir model, however further challenges remain. Consider two issues. Firstly, The increasing availability of real-time production information from smart field-type initiatives requires the reservoir model to be updated more frequently, perhaps in real time. We are struggling to combine the long reservoir model cycle with real-time production data. Production operators should be able to use the reservoir model to support day-to-day field management decisions. Secondly, reservoir performance data should be used to inform the static model and influence the geological and geophysical interpretations. Both systems and people barriers have to be overcome in order to achieve the further productivity gains outlined above. On the systems side, barriers remain in the integration of the static to dynamic model. Within the static domain, technologies like OpenSpirit^TM plus the efforts of Schlumberger and Halliburton have enabled huge gains in static model integration. Yet moving geological models into the simulator is not easy. These challenges can only be addressed by considering the subsurface model as a single integrated process. Yet in many companies, geologists, geophysicists and engineers are in separate organisational structures that do not communicate. We have to solve the people problem first before addressing the systems integration issues.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90077©2008 GEO 2008 Middle East Conference and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain