Finding Petroleum: Visualization

The a la carte nature of technical exploration processes raises profound issues with respect to both work-flow processes and comprehension.

How can an exploration team comprehend multi-faceted and sometimes conflicting interpretations, both efficiently and effectively? The process can be rather cumbersome, bringing both inefficiency and ineffectiveness to exploration management and decision-making; optimization will bring important benefits in terms of both cycle-time and cost reductions.
In an earlier blog I asserted that the most significant way for a company to improve its exploration performance would be to stop drilling dry holes or, put slightly differently, to stop drilling dumb holes where there is a clear ‘loose end’ which means the prospect will fail. But there’s the rub – it is exceedingly difficult to spot a true ‘loose end’ amidst the plethora of data and information of different quality and dimensionality that is contained in a typical prospect evaluation. Put another way, we are talking here of the identification of risk not its quantification (which is a whole other story).

In theory, organizations - and related processes, workflows, standards and procurement practices - need re-shaping to support “integrated exploration” projects.
Another issue is that there are no applications packages which span the entire exploration technical process. Regional work tends to rely on GIS products such as those provided by ARC. The interpretation workstations offered by Schlumberger and Landmark typically address only a subset of the data manipulation and interpretation described by the pyramid, for example aspects of 3D seismic interpretation, the use of well data; definition of trap, seal and reservoir. There are a number of ‘niche’ products that focus on particular aspects of the process, for example the interpretation of seismic attributes, their relation to rock physics and so on. Yet another set of products deal with risk, uncertainty, volumes, development economics and so on. As a consequence, much exploration management and decision-making still lives in a world of Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint, and those who tend the key (upward) information flows within many organizations seem to regard MicroSoft Office as the leading edge of the digital revolution: one result is an emphasis on internal marketing rather than collaboration and understanding.

Changing all this is too much for a humble retired person such as myself to consider and so I return to my observation that teamwork and integration work best when highly skilled individuals, from different disciplines, with different specialisms, are all looking at the same thing.

Thus for me one of the most exciting recent tools of collaboration is Visualization* which gives us something we've never had before - the ability to give all the people involved in an exploration project a common mental picture of the sub-surface on which they are working, a rapid and common understanding of something they will never actually see. Visualization is an immensely powerful stimulus for collaborative working styles, changing the boundaries of teams, and bringing together people of very different disciplines - all applying their skills to a common objective, and as a result of the technology being able to reach decisions in a matter of days rather than weeks or months.

Actually that sounds like “management speak”! In reality, I can recall every time I’ve seen a truly integrated display; for example, a review of a regional geological framework where I could simultaneously view plate tectonic reconstructions, regional potential field maps, a regional seismic data base, seismic stratigraphic and facies interpretations, migration pathways (“plumbing”!), gross depositional environment maps etc.

Integrated Exploration is tough to do, challenging to deliver…… but the “winners” in the oil & gas patch are delivering it…..to their advantage.
* Click on http://www.findingpetroleum.com/forums/video.aspx?id=26 for a good video on Visualisation from Dynamic Graphics.