One overriding principle applies to producing
hydrocarbons from these diverse environments: the
whole must be greater than the sum of the parts. New
technologies have brought considerable value in
improving performance and reducing risk. But for oil
and gas to continue to be viable and affordable com-
ponents of the energy mix of the future, the value of
technology must be enhanced through successful
integration with human skill and operational workflow
to bridge the physical and the digital worlds.
The Digital Workflow
Whether working offshore in deepwater or develop-
ing an unconventional reservoir on land, E&P activity
would be much easier if we could actually see what is
happening thousands of meters below. But the reser-
voir is hidden from view, so instead we can envision it
by building a model of its characteristics and peculiar-
ities. Just as medical science uses many techniques to
determine the health of the human being—from blood
analysis to full-body scanning—so does petroleum
science in its quest to understand and optimize the
performance of the oil and gas reservoir.
To develop and manage an oil field in the most effi-
cient way possible, measurements and other data from
many sources must be integrated into a model that is
consistently updated over time.
However, the measurements
are made at different scales,
from centimeters around the
wellbore to kilometers across
the field; they have different
sensitivities to various reservoir
parameters; and they are made at different times
during the life of the field, for example, as fluid vol-
umes and properties change through production.
Each measurement, taken separately, yields only a
single piece of information. Seismic data, for example,
reveal structural attributes of the reservoir.
Electromagnetic data map fluids—both hydrocarbon
and water—across the reservoir. Pressure measure-
ments document production characteristics.
Integrated through the right model, however, these
measurements become consistent with each other,
making the whole greater than the sum of the parts
and leading to better reservoir understanding.
Many technical domains are needed to build and
validate a reservoir model—geology, geophysics, and
petrophysics in addition to reservoir, drilling, and pro-
duction engineering. The ability of specialists in these
domains to work together seamlessly, efficiently, and
accurately is key to delivering the best possible results.
5
In the PetroTechnical Engineering Center in
Houston, Operations Support Engineers Elvis
Diala and Thomas Alexander Dykes monitor
multiple information sources during real-time
drilling operations on deepwater wells in the
US Gulf of Mexico.
