Repsol: Optimization of oilfield processes
Water, minerals, fossil fuels… These are some of the most valued natural resources in a society that requires them for its basic needs (water), for the manufacture of the devices they work with or enjoy (minerals) or for their vehicles to move (fossil fuels).
Finding them nowadays can be an odyssey and a major costly failure for many companies, if they do not know where to look for them.
Excalibur is the tool developed for Repsol that uses statistical and mathematical techniques that analyze the necessary information to reduce the risk of error and optimize the process of detecting and extracting oilfields.
Repsol is a leading energy and petrochemical multinational that works to facilitate the evolution towards an energy model with fewer emissions
With reservoirs of increasingly complex geology, the oil industry has to be very careful. In an industry where drilling a dry hole can cost millions of euros, investment decisions are always made in a context of uncertainty, because absolute knowledge of what is happening in the subsurface is impossible to predict.
This technological development could be particularly useful in the most uncertain reservoirs, the virgin ones, which represent the biggest challenge for the industry because there is hardly any information about them.
The process
The developed tool generates 3D geological models to simulate a deposit.
Thanks to these models, it is possible to naturally visualize the results of the analysis by combining geological data and information from analogous reservoirs.
Excalibur compensates for the lack of data with an analog search prototype that compares the new reservoir with similar known reservoirs.
Using this reference, it calculates the petrophysical properties of the virgin reservoir and its probabilistic distribution, which serve as a skeleton to reproduce the 3D model.
Results
- 3D model formed by layers where the different properties of the reservoir are represented: the types of rock and its geological structure, permeability or porosity. These are decisive variables when deciding how to produce crude oil and where to drill, and have a decisive impact on economic costs.
- With this use of Big Data, the system also incorporates the knowledge accumulated by the company and the industry in different areas, which makes it easier for experts to obtain more precise solutions.
- Thanks to the development done with Evergine we have provided the client with a more creative, intuitive and user-friendly graphical interface. Excalibur uses the natural Kinect interface with which researchers can control and interact with the machine without the need for peripherals: they move and enlarge various 3D models with their hands.
- The company’s specialists can connect to the Advanced Simulation Laboratory from anywhere in the world, which encourages teamwork, speeds up the process and, above all, improves the quality of the forecasts.
We are ready for new challenges
