Advanced reservoir management for independent oil and gas producers

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:468261

Sgro, A G; Kendall, R P; Kindel, J M; Webster, R B; Whitney, E M ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)

Independent Oil & Gas operators are playing an increasingly important role in the production of hydrocarbons in the United States. Advanced reservoir management techniques, especially approaches based on advanced computer modeling, have been successfully applied by major producers to many oil and gas fields, but have not been particularly accessible to Independent operators. These tools are expensive and often technologically incomprehensible to the small operator. The Internet, which is revolutionizing the way business is conducted in many venues, may offer a way to surmount the problems associated with the cost and accessibility of reservoir management software. This paper will illustrate, through actual case studies involving Independent operators, a paradigm which brings together local consultants, software vendors, expert users (specialized consultants), and Independent operators using the World Wide Web (W{sup 3}) to pursue low cost reservoir evaluation and planning. Moreover, it will demonstrate how meaningful geological and engineering modeling (reservoir simulation) access can be provided directly to Independent operators who are not modeling experts. This is accomplished by task- distributed computing, which allows computing and databases on individual computers to be managed by a central server . The principal conclusion is that it may be possible to bring the technology of advanced reservoir characterization, including stochastic modeling and reservoir simulation to bear on the problems revelant to Independent operators at significantly lower cost utilizing the W{sup 3}. The first phase of this project is complete and in place on the W{sup 3}. Success factors for this approach include: willingness of software vendors to restructure pricing algorithms, security on the W{sup 3}, acceptance of W{sup 3} by local consultants and Independent operators, improvements in W{sup 3} communicators bandwidth.

• OSTI ID: 468261
• Report Number(s): CONF-961003--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
58 GEOSCIENCES
FORECASTING
HYDROCARBONS
OIL FIELDS
PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
PLANNING
PRODUCTION
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT