Best practices in reservoir management may include the simultaneous visualization of fracture simulation, microseismic events, well logs, and geologic structure within a pay zone. CoViz 4D enables a cohesive understanding across the spectrum of practitioners, asset teams, and the entire enterprise for better decision-making.
The effectiveness of a reservoir management strategy can be analyzed by a team’s ability to attain optimal production and cost-efficiency in the hydrocarbon recovery project. Data plays an important role in determining the best approach for the development of an asset as it offers an understanding of reservoirs’ variables, their interrelationships, and their effect on planning and development.
With advancements in software technologies, different data and models can be integrated into a single platform for enhanced understanding. The right software can facilitate an accurate understanding of diverse datasets and their correlation, minimizing uncertainty. 3D and 4D visualization capabilities allow teams to develop reservoir management best practices for the best design and recovery methods.
Integrating the Reservoir Control Factors
Reservoir management often includes the interpretation of a wide range of geological, geophysical, petrophysical, engineering, and production data. Asset teams often face the challenge of an ever-increasing amount of data from exploration, development, and production from multiple wells and drawing their correlations in single discipline platforms. This can create gaps in communication and errors in decision-making. Analysis can be even trickier when there is variation in the subsurface characteristics along an oil field. Such variables may include rock formation, permeability, porosity, and oil saturation along the oil field and have to be captured from various seismic survey and logging techniques. To determine the ideal reservoir management approach, the understanding of these variables and their interrelationship in a common environment is important.
The ability to integrate data in a single geospatial platform facilitates the analysis of different iterations of data and models that can assist in minimizing the uncertainty in the drilling and recovery process. Reservoir management teams can start integration using:
- Well logs and core data for determining various subsurface properties
- 3D seismic data to establish the location of faults and horizon for planning the optimal well path
- Geological model to estimate the hydrocarbon volume and its distribution and flow in the reservoir
3D visualization facilitates comparative analysis of these data with existing reservoir models and historical production data at different phases of asset development. This comparison allows asset teams to develop reservoir management best practices.
Developing Best Practices with 3D Visualization
The data acquired during exploration are a great asset for increasing the understanding of subsurface conditions. The additional volume of data acquired during the development and production phase can further enhance reservoir management by helping to improve data reliability and production estimation. These data can also be utilized to:
- Perform time-depth analysis for analyzing the correlation between existing reservoirs.
- Interpolate spatial and temporal data to minimize uncertainty in real-time.
- Visualize different models together to see the response to fracture treatments.
- Perform a comparative analysis between similar wells and reservoirs to analyze any potential errors in design or planning.
- Determine the best method for drilling.
These interpretations and comparative analyses of data and models allow reservoir and drilling engineers to build the most efficient reservoir models by comparing their data with similar well paths and reservoir models. This can also help determine the best practices to increase efficiency during drilling and recovery.
Leveraging CoViz 4D and EarthVision to Develop Reservoir Management Practices
CoViz 4D and EarthVision are ideal software packages for establishing reservoir management best practices. Together, they allow asset teams to easily import, integrate and interpolate various geological, geophysical, petrophysical, engineering, and production data and models and develop a comprehensive 3D model of the reservoir.
By using CoViz 4D and EarthVision, asset teams can filter the specific data of interest to the existing model to establish the best practices for well planning, drilling, fracture treatment, and injection. The ability to visualize different scenarios by integrating 2D/3D grids, cellular grids, and seismic attributes helps to determine the best recovery option and allows asset teams to make more informed decisions.
CoViz 4D and EarthVision from Dynamic Graphics Inc., give geologists, petrophysicists, and drilling and reservoir engineers the ability to easily model, access, and combine all relevant reservoir characterization parameters associated with its assets for identifying reservoir management best practices. Powerful visualization capabilities enable exploration and analysis of data changes over time, allowing your team to confidently make decisions on the field that positively impact profit and reduce operational risk. To learn more about CoViz 4D and EarthVision, contact our team.
