Monitor the development of a fracture network over time by using microseismic data integrated with geological or petrophysical data.
Integrating various sources and formats of reservoir data seamlessly is often a big hurdle in efficient and effective reservoir management. Each discipline involved in reservoir management has their own software tools and data sources. Those differences make it difficult to easily share this information across disciplines. However, software solutions developed specifically for the petroleum industry have removed those hurdles, giving reservoir management teams the ability to easily integrate the variety of data sources into a single environment that provides powerful 3D and 4D visualization capabilities and facilitates collaborative analysis.
Detailed Understanding of Subsurface Environments
Reservoir management teams gain a more detailed understanding of subsurface environments when geologic, geophysical, cellular property models, drilling logs, reservoir simulations, and other discipline-specific reservoir data are combined to create a detailed, 3D visualization of a reservoir. A common, shared understanding of a reservoir allows team members to evaluate their data in the context of the information provided by other disciplines. With shared insight, reservoir management teams can visually explore and analyze:
- complex geologic structures that influence reservoir development;
- consistency between seismic-derived faults and horizons and well observations;
- stratigraphic models, logs, and core data that characterize geologic and petrophysical properties;
- reservoir lithologies (sands, carbonate, shale) and their influence on development;
- cellular grids that provide a framework for calculating and predicting fluid flow within a reservoir; and
- location and dimensions of geologic target, as well as intermediate targets.
Ideal Locations and Trajectories for Wells
With these capabilities, planners can:
- Identify geological features that present potential wellbore integrity risks.
- Analyze lithology, faults, horizons, and petrophysical properties using the 3D model.
- Specify a series of design points and automatically interpolate between points using standard drilling curve templates.
- Sample a cellular grid for detailed property attributes and averages intersected by a proposed wellpath.
- Assess different well design and trajectory options, based on proximity to nearby wells, kick-off points, and dogleg severity.
- Analyze collision-risk for a wide range of well designs, including dual opposing laterals, stacked multibranch well, re-entry laterals, clusters, and multilaterals.
- Estimate drilling costs based on varying geophysical parameters along a planned wellbore.
Monitor Production Trends and Their Impact on the Reservoir
With the ability to visualize production data over time—days, weeks, months, or years—and analyze it in the context of a detailed representation of the subsurface environment, production engineers can more accurately:
- Monitor oil-gas-water production rates for individual wells, production patterns, and even entire fields and better correlate production trends.
- Determine if sand accumulation is likely to impact production, based on historical analysis of nearby wells. If so, what mitigation methods were most effective?
- Quickly identify mechanical causes of declining production, such as failing pumps, broken sucker rods, or casing leaks.
- Evaluate microseismic data to determine the extent of a distributed fracture network and identify possible thief zones.
- Assess injection well effectiveness as part of a secondary recovery strategy.
Time-Step Analysis (4D) in Integrated Reservoir Management
When individual data sources that characterize changing reservoir conditions can be integrated and animated over time, reservoir management teams gain an added dimension in understanding how development and production decisions impact recovery efforts.
CoViz 4D: An Essential Tool for Integrated Reservoir Management
CoViz 4D, a data visualization analytics software from Dynamic Graphics, Inc., gives geologists, geophysicists, and reservoir engineers the ability to easily access and combine all relevant data associated with subsurface environments. Powerful analytic capabilities enable users to explore data relationships, analyze the accuracy of depth conversion of 3D seismic, and visualize seismic well ties and velocity models to facilitate decisions that positively impact profit and reduce operational risk. To learn more about CoViz 4D contact our team.
