Ocean Users Group Meeting Presentation Abstracts

Ocean Development at Chevron

Sue Downie and Al Fortier, SIEM Team, Chevron ETC

After two early pilot studies, and an extended evaluation, Chevron selected Ocean/Petrel as one of its two vendor systems for its Next-Generation Software in late 2007.

We are now developing and deploying plug-ins in the areas of domain object import/export, data management/inventory utilities, interpretation operations, time-depth conversion, seismic attributes, property modeling, upgridding and simulation.

In this presentation, we will share our experience of Ocean Development and requirements to successfully deploy our plug-ins.

Leveraging Ocean in Shell

Tim G. Howard, Shell

Shell has made significant investment in using Ocean to extend the capabilities of Petrel to provide enhanced workflows for the global Shell user community.  In this presentation I'll discuss some the of strategic rationale for this investment and describe several of the resulting benefits that have been realized for the Shell user community.  A detailed example will follow, demonstrating workflows that have been developed between Petrel and TechLog.  This bridge between the disciplines drives tighter integration between Shell's Production Geoscience and Petrophysics practitioners adding significant quality improvements to overall volumetric evaluation.

Ocean-powered Petrel Workflow

Doug Palkowsky - Hess Corporation

Reservoir Modeling workflows often require timely development of innovative solutions. Two example challenges we recently faced are the need for rapid model update procedures to incorporate new well data and identifying marginal stray pay regions. Petrel procedures were defined to address these two challenges. In both cases a Petrel workflows were implemented that incorporated plug-in modules. This combination of tools facilitated rapid development of solutions to the modeling challenges.

This presentation investigates the development of two simple Ocean plug-in modules. Each of which addresses a critical workflow step yet were straight forward in terms of functionality and implementation. The first plug-in is designed to facilitate local model updates when new well data is available. The approach taken involved the identification of local "boundary cell" regions based on the new well location. Regions of cells were designated as “uspcaled” along with the cells at the new well location. Finally, a local property was generated from the designated upscaled cells and merged into the existing property. The second plug-in is designed to identify connected volume regions that are in contact with an interpreted “geobody” region.  Connected volume properties were generated in Petrel from “active cells” that met petrophysical cutoff criteria. Attached pay volume regions could be computed using interpreted body regions and connected volumes.

In brief, both procedures could be performed using a manual brute force approach. However, the CPU time and end-user time can be large. Petrel workflows address some, but not all of the challenge. Plug-in modules implemented using the Ocean API fill in the technological gaps in the procedural workflows. This can provide a valuable solution at relatively low cost.

In conclusion rapid development of Ocean-powered Petrel workflow solutions can be accomplished using a combination of the Petrel workflows and plug-in modules. Simple plug-in modules can be implemented to address technology gaps and improve end user efficiency. The overall development time and cost of such solutions makes this an attractive mechanism for solution delivery.

Ocean for Petrel roadmap

Vincent Dury, Ocean Product Champion, SIS

This presentation will cover the ongoing developments and plans for the upcoming 2010.1 release, plus some more extensive roadmaps beyond that.

Coupling a third-party simulator to Petrel using Ocean

Rafael Moraes, Petrobras

The main goal of this development is to couple a third-party simulator to Petrel using Ocean. In 2009, an API which makes possible the seamless coupling of third-party simulators was provided. It supplies a common GUI, some hooks to the plug-in to convert the ECLIPSE keyword-based input deck into one compatible with the simulator and the third-party simulator results to a format that Petrel understands.

In the current development state of the plug-in, it’s possible to construct the reservoir geological model using the Petrel features, populate the simulation case with the static properties, writes the simulator input deck, run the simulation and load the results back to Petrel’s data tree to post process them.. All other data required by the simulation must be constructed in another pre-processor software and passed to the plug-in as an input parameter.

One of the plug-in advantages is that common workflows which depend on the work of geologists and reservoir engineers are made easier by bringing both professionals to the same platform, integrating their works. Many features available in Petrel can be used to construct the simulation geological model and the simulation model itself. For instance, it’s possible to them, together, test and compare several upscaling techniques by comparing the simulation results that used the different static properties.

The next steps comprise the improvement of the plug-in by taking advantage from the third-party simulator API evolutions in order to construct a whole simulation model and post-process its results, both grid and time-series data, inside Petrel..

Seabed roadmap

Raj Kannan, Seabed Product Champion, SIS

An update on the plans for Seabed, SIS’ open database solution for the future.

Accelerate innovation using Blueback and Ocean

Pål Hovdenak and Ketil Waagbø, Blueback Reservoir

At Blueback Reservoir we have a unique mix of Petrel/Ocean development expertise, Petrel user experience and G&G domain knowledge.

We are in an excellent position to effectively produce Petrel plug-ins, both for client specific workflows and for commercial products. We started using Ocean in 2007 and have now developed and commercialized 3 Petrel plug-in products, in addition to several Ocean development projects for our customers.

We have several Ocean projects now established a programming layer on top of Ocean, and interfacing our various applications. This layer acts as an expanded development kit, and speeds up significantly the development time in new projects.

Our first commercial Petrel plug-in was the Bridge product for visualization and interpretation of electromagnetic data in Petrel. This new data type was not supported in Petrel/Ocean and developing Bridge required extensive work in creating custom domain objects with dedicated visualization and functionality.

Our second commercial Petrel plug-in is the Blueback Toolbox. It is a set of smaller plug-ins for completing Petrel workflows and adding missing functionalities in standard Petrel. Further development is guided by feedback from Petrel users from around the world.

We expect to commercialize several more Petrel plug-ins in the years to come, as Ocean in the Blueback software team is key for our business development. Ocean has proven to be a solid product with excellent possibilities for building on Petrel functionality. Issues around handling of support, licensing, Ocean pricing and marketing opportunities are areas where Schlumberger can improve. At Blueback we are keen to help improve Ocean and Petrel plug-in deployment in the market, and would welcome the chance to work closer with Schlumberger.

In this presentation, we will share our experience of Ocean Development and requirements to successfully deploy our plug-ins.

DESTINY: A Petrel Plug-in for History Matching and Dynamic Reservoir Characterization

Han-Young Park, Suksang Kang and Akhil Datta-Gupta, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

Reconciling high resolution geologic models to dynamic data such as transient pressure, tracer and multiphase production history or time-lapse seismic data is by far the most time-consuming aspect of the workflow for geoscientists and engineers. The DESTINY plug-in is designed for fast calibration of high resolution geologic models to dynamic data based on the research at the Texas A&M University. DESTINY utilizes unique information gleaned from streamlines and a novel generalized travel time inversion of production data to update geologic models.  It can be used with both finite difference as well as streamline simulators. Streamline-based sensitivities can be used to quickly identify the discrepancies between the geologic model and reservoir dynamic response. The sensitivities can be used in conjunction with inversion algorithm to make targeted changes to geologic models while preserving geologic realism. The DESTINY can also be used for assisted history matching aided by the streamline-derived sensitivities.

Enhanced Structural Analysis in Petrel^TM from Seismic Through to Simulation

Steve Freeman, Simon Harris, RDR Ltd, Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

A wide-ranging set of tools for enhanced structural analysis in Petrel^TM will be delivered to the market in 2010 via the Ocean platform, which has enabled the seamless integration of RDR technologies while maintaining the typical usability and look-and-feel of Petrel^TM. The features significantly extend the capabilities of available fault seal calculations, and also provide numerous additional structural analysis tools ranging from seismic interpretation to general geo-modelling. RDR Ltd combine world-leading consulting with the development of software tools, and have been at the forefront of structure and seal analysis for the past 18 years.

The updated and flexible fault seal tools are delivered via a straightforward interface populated with sensible defaults and expert guidance, allowing non-experts to produce sensible results in a timely manner. The expert can leverage the full power of the system with numerous new algorithms and processes. Reservoir engineers are for the first time provided with geologically-based options for tuning fault transmissibilities to dynamic data.

Seismic interpreters will welcome the wealth of structural imaging, anomaly identification and data clean-up tools that allow them to realize more robust interpretations more rapidly. General Petrel^TM users will see an abundance of analysis tools to enable more effective imaging and analysis of faults.

The module’s fundamental aim is to raise the quality of structural analysis across the Petrel^TM platform so that general users can develop more geologically robust models more easily and efficiently.