TECHNOLOGY ENHANCES INTEGRATED TEAMS' USE OF PHYSICAL RESOURCES
D.B. Neff, T.S. Thrasher
Phillips Petroleum Co.
Bartlesville, Okla.
Interdiscipline teams within Phillips Petroleum Co.'s operations worldwide find and develop hydrocarbon reserves profitably using state of the art computing and communications.
New developments in computer technologies have allowed management practices to change and become more effective.
The interdiscipline, integrated team of the 1990s represents effective management of human resources. The application of new technologies by the integrated team represents effective use of physical resources.
Phillips continues to aggressively support the team and its technologies as part of its business strategy.
The integrated team can consist of geology, geophysics, and engineering staff dedicated full time to a specific project. An example of this at Phillips is a dedicated exploitation team in Woking, U.K., assigned to the 4.7 tcf Hewett field in the North Sea.
As an alternative to the dedicated approach, a team can be assembled on an ad hoc basis with a specific exploration or exploitation problem to solve that requires experts from any or all of the individual disciplines in drilling, production, reservoir engineering, geology, geophysics, land, and information technology. An ad hod team of this type can support a full-time, dedicated team.
Phillips team members can be located in various offices worldwide. Corporate research and development staff based in Bartlesville, Okla., are frequently assigned to division office teams but are not required to physically reside in that office as a result of modern communication links.
The integrated team is not new to Phillips. Examples of such teams can be traced to the drilling and production of the Bartlesville sands in northeastern Oklahoma in the early 1900s.
What makes the integrated team of the 1990s unique is the technology that supports the team and in many cases even drives the team to greater levels of integration. The modern, integrated team is just as likely to meet at a computer terminal as at a conference table (Fig. 1).
Management can bring the right people together to form an integrated team, but technology can enable the team to work to full potential.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
The late 1970s and 1980s brought new technologies that significantly affected the petroleum industry.
Major computer technologies include the supercomputer, interactive workstations, networking, rapid access mass storage devices, and 3-D visualization hardware.
Phillips integrated teams capitalize on these computer technologies in the following areas:
SUPERCOMPUTERS
These massive number crunchers have impacted the integrated teams primarily through the 'disciplines of geophysics and engineering.
Advancements in 3-D seismic acquisition and processing are closely linked to the supercomputers. The use of 3-D seismic in exploitation has drawn geology, geophysics, and engineering closer together.
Concurrently, the supercomputer enabled reservoir engineering simulators to more accurately (and with greater detail) model primary field performance and secondary and enhanced oil recovery and to design development strategies for new fields.
The information for the simulator's enhanced detail in the reservoir geological model is frequently provided by the 3-D seismic data.
The prior paper and pencil technologies allowed each discipline to work its piece of the problem; put the results on a map, graph, or cross section; and then pass the results along to the next discipline.
When Phillips processed the first inhouse 3-D survey on the Cray 1M supercomputer and ran the first reservoir simulation in 1984, the paper and pencil era began a rapid demise, and the era of team interaction began a rapid ascent. To date, over 100 3-D surveys have passed through Phillips Cray computers.
A modem reservoir characterization study exemplifies the demand of 3-D surveys and reservoir simulations on the interdiscipline team. Not only must large volumes of data be passed between the disciplines in a sequential order, but each team must be able to access the other's data at any time in the cradle to grave process of characterizing a reservoir (Fig. 2).
Prior to acquiring 3-D data, acquisition modeling is often performed with Phillips-developed software to ensure that adequate data will be acquired.
A current structural model of the subsurface, obtained from existing formation tops, 2-D seismic data, and gravity/magnetic data, is combined with borehole velocity data (sonic logs, vertical seismic profiles, and checkshot surveys) to create an acoustic earth model. Shot-to-receiver ray-paths are then simulated in the computer to define the optimum seismic acquisition geometry for the targeted reservoir.
Processing the survey again requires integration of formation tops and the acoustic earth model. Petrophysical density data are needed in seismic processing as part of the synthetic seismogram generation and dephasing steps. Modem depth migration algorithms require a subsurface velocity model created from geological, prior seismic, and well log data before the migration processing can begin.
Interpretation of the 3-D survey i!4 even more demanding on the other disciplines, especially when direct hydrocarbon or porosity mapping is performed.
Recent studies in the Greater Ekofisk area of the North Sea required reservoir pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) analysis data for forward seismic modeling that in turn helped define the seismic expression of oil reservoirs and their downdip limits.
The historical pressure, water production, oil production, and gas/oil ratios were integrated as part of fault picking in addition to classic geologic log correlations. Paleontologic data formed an integral part of seismic sequence analysis, as did core description and electron microscope petrographic analysis.
The petrophysics computer-processed logs and core analysis were needed to define borehole porosity values, which were further correlated with such seismic attributes as amplitude and waveform shape.1
The final 3-D computer maps were passed to the reservoir engineer's simulation programs for integration with log, PVT, rock, and production data for history matching and performance prediction. Results here will be correlated to monthly production data and cycled back for further review by geology, petrophysics, and/or seismic interpretations when production anomalies occur.
The chain of reservoir characterization and reservoir simulation is complex. The supercomputer outputs billions of scientific data points that are assimilated by the integrated team in the quest to discover and exploit the hydrocarbon reservoir. Interpretation of the massive data volume required a new computer resource, the interactive computer workstation.
INTERACTIVE WORKSTATIONS
While the Phillips Cray supercomputer was processing orders of magnitude more data, the interactive workstation was evolving to help analyze the mountains of data.
Initially, output from supercomputers and mainframe computers was in hardcopy format. This limitation restricted interpretation to only a part of the total 3-D data volumes.
The interactive workstations eliminated the need for paper and pencil and allowed interpretation to move from the batch mode to the truly interactive domain and to fully utilize all of the data.
In 1980, Phillips had less than 10 interactive workstations. In 1993, the Phillips scientific community has about 1,000 workstations, which include high-end PCs, Suns, DECs, IBMs, MicroVAXs, Hewlett-Packards (HPs), and Silicon Graphics hardware.
Every major project undertaken by Phillips interdiscipline teams will involve numerous sessions on several different interactive workstations, be it a predrilling analysis on a 486 PC, a simulation run on an IBM RS-6000, a subsalt visualization on a Silicon Graphics, a velocity analysis on a DEC, geologic cross section and map generation on a Sun (see cover), map drafting on a MicroVAX, or petrophysical well log analysis on an HP computer.
Recent workstation developments include interfacing several machines together locally in a physical cluster or using networks and software to link central processing units (CPUs) from various sites into a virtual cluster.
These clusters provide near supercomputer capabilities but allow the data to reside and process at the local office. The workstation has become the indispensable workhorse of the interdiscipline team.
Phillips has a philosophy of "buy, don't build" nonproprietary workstation software if possible. As a result, most workstation software is provided by outside vendors, with Phillips staff devoted to interfacing products or enhancing these products with proprietary application programs.
Some of the more significant inhouse software used by the integrated teams includes engineering production analysis, 2 reservoir simulation visualization (Fig. 3), drilling history data acquisition and reporting, petrophysical analysis and borehole visualization, subsidence modeling, base-map generation through graphic retrieval, 3-D seismic post-stack depth conversion, 3-D seismic visualization, 3-D seismic acquisition modeling, and seismic lithology inversion.
Combining the vendor products and Phillips developments has created a demand in several areas of computer technology, most significantly networking and data bases.
NETWORKING
Phillips has worldwide computer links between all division and regional offices. The networks facilitate office-to-office communications by linking the IBM mainframe, Cray supercomputer, UNIX workstations, and PC token ring networks together.
Initial network connections concentrated on linking the corporate mainframe and local VAX host computers. Demands of the integrated team soon required all machines to be interlinked so that data could flow between interdiscipline applications without passing through the corporate hub. The networks give the integrated team the ability to draw expertise from anywhere within the company.
The IBM mainframe-based Profs/Office Vision electronic mail provides a communication tool that keeps team members informed of significant activities regardless of whether the team member is in Bartlesville, Perth, or the North Sea.
Video-conference centers in the headquarters and division offices allow interoffice teams to communicate more frequently than travel budgets would normally allow.
Workstation images are also reviewed concurrently at different machines via network communications. Map, graphs, and reports are typically sent as digital images without the delay of physical mail delivery.
The computer network provides the mechanism by which the team can effectively communicate and coordinate activities without having to re- side in adjacent offices.
DATA BASES
Phillips and most other oil companies quickly recognized that networks provided an efficient means to move digital data but that, once retrieved, the data was often incompatible with the workstation application software or hardware.
Phillips, as a member of the Petro-technical Open Software Corp. (POSC), looks to that organization and its major software vendors to provide a long-term solution to database-related issues.
In the short term, Phillips Information Technology Division has undertaken to support the scientific teams by focusing on those workstation applications that are most critical to the integrated team, defining a data model and workstation data base to support those applications, and providing a graphic interface selector to retrieve and move data from mainframe computers to the workstation applications.
This endeavor will concentrate on geologic applications like log analysis results, mapping, core and PVT analysis; geophysical applications such as seismic interpretation, seismic processing, geostatistics, and lithology inversion; engineering applications like phase behavior, 3-D simulation, system analysis, and production forecasting; and drilling and production processes such as daily drilling reports and postdrilling appraisals.
Well log related data is a maj . or constituent of the project data base as it is the one entity that is most common to all the disciplines. Standardization figures heavily in the success of this project, including hardware, software, network communication protocols, and data formats.
Phillips recognizes that additional improvements in integrated team productivity will be heavily dependent on the ability to move data quickly between team member workstation applications.
VISUALIZATION
One of the newest technologies to support the integrated team is computer visualization.
Phillips geophysicists first used graphics animation in the mid-1980s to analyze 3-D seismic data. Rapid 'updates of horizontal or vertical slices of the acoustically imaged subsurface allowed geoscientists to visualize the earth's internal structure and faulting patterns as never before.
Today's inhouse and vendor software allows for even greater animation, rotation, and shading of 3-D volumes whether it is seismic data, well bore data, or reservoir simulation models of rock fluids. The scientist can look at the 3-D image from above, below, beside, and even from within the data cube.
The power of visualization comes from its ability to synthesize diverse data types and attributes into a form that the human senses can better understand.
The integrated team benefits from visualization when data elements from geology, land, geophysics, petrophysics, drilling, and reservoir engineering are displayed in the same 3D earth model in a form that team members can easily visualize.
Images of complex subsurface geometries like a Gulf of Mexico salt dome (Fig. 4) can be enhanced with lease boundaries, well-bore paths, vertical and horizontal seismic sections, and a highlighted salt interface. 3 Wire line log data can be shown as if the viewer were traveling through the well bore, and electron microscope pictures of rock samples can be superimposed against classic log displays (Fig. 5).
Visualization allows the team to sit at a video monitor and see the reservoir at a macro scale of thousands of feet or a micro scale of thousands of microns. Visualization offers the ability to build a three-dimensional earth model at the conception of a project and continue to refine and populate the model so that every team member can hear someone else's description of the reservoir-and can see it as well.
Visualization may be the most powerful and persuasive communication too] of the integrated team.
CASE HISTORIES
Examples of growth and technology support for the integrated team are found in the following North Sea and Alaska project descriptions.
NORTH SEA
A major effort to build a reservoir model and to history-match the Ekofisk field started in the early 1970s.
At that time, coordination of the simulation effort was assigned to the corporate reservoir staff with support from geology, geophysics, and corporate engineering staffs who resided in Bartlesville. The Phillips Norway staff completed the team and worked closely with the Bartlesville staff to address additional data analysis and interpretation tasks.
The main vehicle for data transfer was the Bartlesville IBM mainframe computer and a time sharing option (TSO) link to Stavanger. Telex, telephone, and conventional mail completed the communication link. The corporate mainframe served as the central computer support for all disciplines on the team, and data processing ran 24 hr/day.
As technology advanced, so did the level of integration among the disciplines. Growth in the support staffs and computer resources of the international team allowed simulation responsibility to transfer to Phillips Norway in the early 1980s.
Installation of an IBM 4341 in the Stavanger office in 1981 was critical as it allowed Stavanger team members to process work locally without the queue and transmission delays associated with using the central stateside computer.
The processing effort was expanded to include the Bartlesville Cray 1M and later Cray Y-MP resources, coupled with Stavanger's upgrades to a 3081, 3090, and the current ES9000 mainframe computer.
With each new technology came new levels of achievement for the international team. Geology provided more detailed log analysis values for each 3-D simulation model layer and mapped the variables using model grid orientation. Structural mapping was significantly enhanced with the addition of a 3-D survey.
Well test data and analysis were transferred electronically, eliminating the requirements that both offices hand-enter the data before processing.
The link between the 3-D simulation results, surface process modeling, and production forecasting became more closely integrated. The network system allowed computer processing to access the most appropriate machine for the job.
Today the IBM RS/6000 workstation and workstation cluster are doing much of the computation for reservoir simulation and surface process simulation.
The technology of 1970 required the Ekofisk experts and machines to reside together. The technology of the 1990s gives management the ability to draw on Phillips's worldwide expertise at any time for any problem.
ALASKA
Exploration activity and subsequent discovery of potential commercial hydrocarbons in the Cook Inlet and North Slope areas of Alaska prompted an integrated team effort among geoscience and engineering staff.
Technology has played an integral role in each issue that affects the exploration decision tree. Smaller teams are solving tasks that were once performed by larger organizations and at the same time processing more data in greater detail.
The Sun and HP workstations are the primary computer resource for the geoscientist. For example, all electronic log data, both conventional density, sonic, dipmeter, and the more advanced tools like the formation microscanner (FMS) are analyzed on local workstations.
Satellite links on location provide transmission of log data directly from the wellsite to the analyst's desktop computer. A unique feature of the HP workstation log analysis 'system allows professionals in different locations to work together on the same project interactively and simultaneously.
Both satellite and land line communications on the rig provide direct links to the mainframe-based daily drilling record system and electronic mail. The daily drilling information is actually entered from the rig and can be uploaded directly to the mainframe Drilling History system. This information is then instantly accessible worldwide.
Tight holes have security levels added, and the information is available only on a need to know basis. Therefore, from any type of computer connected to the Phillips computer network, a team member can access data or mail from a rig drilling in the middle of the Beaufort Sea or Cook Inlet.
These capabilities are available for Phillips locations around the world wherever reliable communication lines exist.
The Alaska projects have proven to be a working example of true team effort since their beginnings. Through the leadership of the Phillips Alaskan exploration team based in Houston, supported by the corporate staffs, the first well in many years was drilled on the North Slope in 1990.
Since that time, North American partnership, development geology, and research and services staffs have formed an integrated development team to support all the various activities. Close cooperation with production, land, and facilities groups has proven very successful. Technology continues to play a vital role in facilitating these efforts.
CONCLUSION
As technologies advance, so do the capabilities of the integrated work team at Phillips.
Management practices involving teamwork are augmented and strongly supported by technologies like supercomputers, interactive workstations, electronic networks, computer databases, and graphics visualization.
The interdiscipline workforce is fully effective because new technologies continue to support and drive the integrated team.
REFERENCES
- Neff, D.B., "Estimated pay mapping using three-dimensional seismic data and incremental pay thickness modeling," Geophysics, Vol. 55, 1990, pp. 567-575.
- Thomas, L.K., Evans, C.E., Sandoval, R.K., and Reist, R.D., 'Development, distribution, and utilization of reservoir engineering workstation software," paper SPE 24444 presented at the 1992 SPE Petroleum Computer Conference, Houston, July 1992.
- Wyatt, K.D., Towe, S.K., Layton, J.E., Wyatt, S.B., Von Seggern, D.H., and Brockmeier, C.A., "Ergonomics in 3-D depth migration," 62nd Society of Exploration Geophysicists International Meeting and Exposition, October 1992.
Copyright 1993 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.