Improving Well and Reservoir Management Efforts with Data Visualization

Comprehensive view of well locations in a geologic context.

3D visualization provides a comprehensive view of well locations in a geologic context.

Effective well and reservoir management depends upon timely access and analysis of relevant data associated with hydrocarbon assets. Volumes of diverse data are acquired throughout the life of a reservoir, from preliminary seismic analysis to daily production data indicating well performance. Taken individually, these data provide incomplete, but nonetheless valuable, insight regarding reservoir characteristics—geologic formations, permeability, estimated ultimate recovery, well trajectory, completion strategy, stimulation methods, and water cut. These data attain significantly greater value when integrated and visualized to provide a more complete and detailed perspective of wells and reservoirs.

With access to all relevant data, every member of a reservoir management team can easily explore and analyze relationships among data (their own, and that of other disciplines) to gain a better understanding of reservoir dynamics. Below, we provide three examples that demonstrate the opens in a new windowvalue of data integration and visualization in improving well and reservoir management.

Understanding Wells, From Pad to TVD

An integrated view of a well captures the complete well history, from the opens in a new windowplanning stage up to yesterday’s production metrics. Three-dimensional visualization of a wellbore, laterals, and sidetracks depicts a well in its full geologic context, as well as shows its location relative to other wells in the field.

Any of the wells depicted can be visualized and evaluated individually to better understand how development and operational decisions have impacted well performance.

  • Well logs characterize physical rock properties encountered while drilling the well.
  • Well-centric views navigate along the wellbore visualizing the data along the wellpath.
  • Wellpath symbols for perforation, open hole test, open hole completion, casing, slotted liner, injection, and other parameters, with starting and ending MD for each. Optional descriptive comments and/or links to wellbore documents and reports can provide additional information regarding wellbore features.
  • Microseismic event geometry shows frac locations, magnitudes, and stages in context of fault geometries and stratigraphy.

The ability to visualize an entire wellbore, examine any portion in detail, and easily access information describing wellbore characteristics, facilitates collaborative assessment and decision-making with the goal of optimizing well performance.

Production Data Compares Well Performance in Context

Visualization enables reservoir engineers to quickly assess the performance of the entire reservoir, as well as individual wells. Scaled towers or pie charts located along a wellbore indicate opens in a new windowproduction data—gas, oil, water—for any determined time period—daily, weekly, monthly, cumulative. Visualization makes it easy to compare the production of a well with surrounding wells. Reservoir engineers can study the interactions between wells and identify conditions that may be jeopardizing well production.
Individual well production in context of nearby wells and subsurface formations.

Assess individual well production in context of nearby wells and subsurface formations.

Wells drilled from a single pad, or wells with similar trajectories and geology in other parts of the field, can be compared to determine what factors account for differences in production performance. Evaluating well performance with a detailed understanding of the geologic, petrophysical, and surface infrastructure facilitates faster diagnosis and mitigation of problems such as:

  • Steam flooding of laterals not delivering expected results due to a potential thief zone in a mature reservoir.
  • Improper flow rates leading to over-production and water coning problems.
  • Perforations becoming plugged with particulates precipitated by formation fluid incompatibility.
  • Overburden collapse altering pore structure and permeability around wellbore.
  • Production decline resulting from wellhead seal and mechanical failure.
Reservoir engineers can gain an even better understanding of reservoir trends by opens in a new windowanimating production data over time. A determined reservoir engineer could use a spreadsheet or write some custom code in Python to combine and compare production data from individual wells, well pads, production patterns, or the entire reservoir in a 2D or 3D graph. However, animating changes in production data over time while showing the 3D spatial relationship among wells can reveal patterns and interdependencies that would otherwise remain hidden in 2D and 3D graphs.
Animation shows field expansion and comparative well production over time.

Animation shows field expansion and comparative well production over time. Blue = water, green = oil, orange = injections.

CoViz 4D: Data Visualization for Improved Well and Reservoir Management

The challenges of integrating a wide range of reservoir data and providing powerful visualization and analytic capabilities to help reservoir teams obtain the greatest insight from those data is addressed by CoViz 4D. Backed by decades of experience in developing software for the petroleum industry, Dynamic Graphics, Inc. developed opens in a new windowCoViz 4Dopens PDF file to enable individual disciplines responsible for well and reservoir management to easily integrate and share their data.

CoViz 4D can easily ingest volumes of data associated with a large number of wells, multiple reservoirs, or entire fields giving reservoir teams the ability to focus their analysis on the macro, the micro, and any level in between.

CoViz 4D can easily ingest volumes of data associated with a large number of wells, multiple reservoirs, or entire fields giving reservoir teams the ability to focus their analysis on the macro, the micro, and any level in between. An extensive set of visualization capabilities present integrated data in 2D, 3D, and 4D (time series), allowing geologists, geophysicists, well planners, drilling engineers, and production personnel to better understand data relationships and improve reservoir well and reservoir management strategies.

CoViz 4D, a data visualization analytics software from Dynamic Graphics, Inc., gives oil and gas professionals the ability to easily integrate relevant data associated with petroleum assets. Powerful visualization capabilities enable teams to analyze changing reservoir conditions and confidently make management decisions to positively impact recovery efforts. To learn more about CoViz 4D contact our team.

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