Texaco E&P Center Allows Visual Probe Of 3D Data Volumes

• The screen at Texaco E&P's visualization center is curved to provide a panoramic view of geophysical images [10,032 bytes].
• With the 3D probe, a technician can "draw" a feature of interest into seismic data [12,242 bytes].

With a hand mouse, users move a rectangular 3D probe through a transparent data volume and view data on the probe's sides or inside of it. The view changes as the probe moves. Among many other things, the movement provides a dynamic view of how reflection positions and characteristics change as position changes within the volume.

The ability to isolate a volume within a volume and to manipulate it in real time is part of a program called Geoprobe. It uses proprietary Texaco software developed by a team led by Michael Zeitlin, portfolio manager for Texaco's visualization technology and developer of the visualization center. For his work in developing the visualization center, Zeitlin in May received an award for managing information technology from American Management Systems and Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration.

Texaco opened the Houston center in November after 11 months of development (OGJ, Nov. 24, 1997, p. 82). In December it opened a similar visualization center for production analysis at Kern River field in California.

The Houston center operates on a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 Infinite Reality supercomputing system with eight processors, three graphics pipelines, and 6 gigabytes of main memory. Images of 3D seismic and other geophysical data appear on a curved screen 25 ft high and 8 ft high with a 160° field of view.

According to Texaco E&P, the center enables technicians to load and interactively study five times more 3D seismic data than they can handle at one time on a conventional workstation.

Since the center opened, Texaco has improved display capabilities of items like wells and formation tops and added to what the probes can do.

Users set dimensions of the probe, which can control autopicking of horizons, color features of interest, and erase earlier renderings.

Barton Payne, senior research scientist, says the probe can become a "subvolume" within the total data volume. Users can create images within it to the full extent possible in the larger volume.

A user thus might make data transparent inside the probe except for amplitude "clouds" showing important reflection features. Probes can cut into each other to, for example, create hollow areas from which to view data as though from the inside out.

An important advantage of the probe, says Payne, is the ability it gives interpreters to see the "big picture and details all at once." A user might view items inside the probe on a 10 m scale and the volume outside it on a 100 km scale in order to study details of a single geophysical feature in the context of regional geology.

"That kind of scale change is important in geology because you have to consider both scales and all scales in between," Payne notes.

And the real-time probe and visualization center provide unprecedented speed.

"We've had people come up with 15 plays in a day," Payne says. Using conventional equipment, "you have to pick the first three (horizons) you stumble across."

And the large screen and ample work space easily accommodate multidisciplinary teams and the rapid exchange of ideas.

"You figure out things in an hour or two that it used to take months to do," Payne says.

The ability to generate a relatively large number of ideas in a short amount of time "gives you a willingness to revise and change," he adds. "That's an important thing in interpretation."

Users of the center can wear stereoscopic glasses to see data in 3D but often remove them because they become heavy. Payne says groups often use the center for 8-12 hr at a time.

Exploration and production teams become fully proficient in the visualization system after a day and a half of training.

The center can be used to view any kind of 3D images. For geophysical work the core advantage is the ability to conveniently and in real time see and interactively study all available seismic data.

"It makes a change in the way you think," Payne says.

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