With summer coming to a close, the anticipation of returning to university is ever apparent. I have spent the past four months working on a very interesting project here at TAQA and the knowledge and experience I have gained is something I will appreciate for the rest of my days. As I mentioned in my last column, I have been doing reservoir characterization for my summer project using inversion techniques and attribute extractions.
After spending a week reading papers and attending courses I was set to task. The goal was to use various software programs and their respective features to see if I could find a way to definitively determine heterogeneity within a zone of interest. It is my understanding that this particular zone of interest is thought to be relatively homogeneous so I was told by my mentors to be prepared to find nothing. When my eyebrows jumped up my forehead in surprise, my mentor informed me that finding “nothing” is still a big part of the science and I had no choice but to agree. This little conversation fired me up and made me even more determined to produce a positive result.
After a project scope meeting outlining the requirements of my project, I began loading the data into my inversion software. Once this was complete the first step was to statistically extract a zero phase wavelet which would be used to convolve with reflectivity and produce a synthetic trace. This synthetic trace is then used to create a composite trace which gives you the ability to tie and correlate all of the wells in the area and select the ones which I would use for the inversion.
The image that I produced with the inversion gave a glimmer of hope that there could indeed be heterogeneity within the zone. But as I have mentioned before, I understand that these things require a great deal of support in order to make quality decisions so I moved my project into a program which extracts certain attributes for further interpretation.
One such attribute is something called waveform classification. This process selects waveforms which show different characteristics and compares every trace in the volume to these given classes. One class indicated a more dense package within the zone of interest and the other showed a less dense middle package. The map that was produced also indicated heterogeneity which gave me another piece of the puzzle.
Given the magnitude of this project, my work is ongoing so at this point I stopped working and began putting my presentation together. This has been my first oppotuinity to present in front of people so needless to say, the nerves were a little frayed. With the help of my mentors here at TAQA and around the industry my presentation came together in a timely fashion and went off without a hitch. Everyone seemed quite receptive to the information that I relayed and with the discoveries that I made, my project will continue…for now.
Over my time here at TAQA, I have developed a deeper love for my chosen degree path. The images that I have produced were not only scientific support to me; they also struck me as works of art. Works that mathematics and Mother Nature are responsible for and with each little step I take towards my goal, my excitement grows.
I would like to thank TAQA, Dr. Peter McGillivray, Kelly Hrabi and the entire South Asset Team for a thoroughly enriching experience this summer. You have all given me an opportunity that I will never forget.
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