Talk:Seismic to simulation

Essay?

See my note here. We seem to have a walled garden created by Boldstroke. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 00:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess we need someone familiar enough with the subject to say if it's a notable enough subject on its own account or just a part of reservoir engineering... TastyCakes (talk) 22:57, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I tried Googling the term "Seismic to Simulation" and got many returns, sometimes with hyphens and sometimes not. One webpage said ... 'What engineers like to call “from pore to process” is mimicked by the “seismic to simulator” approach' ... so that may partly explain the name. It would probably be better to find a name that better describes what is being done. Melcombe (talk) 15:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll move this to Seismic to simulation as per wikipedia capitalization conventions. TastyCakes (talk) 17:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that this is part of what I would call 'reservoir modelling', rather than the current title. The full process should consist of:

• Seismic interpretation of the prospect/field to provide a 3D framework of sedimentary horizons and faults (missing from the current article)
• Model building - turning this interpretation into a consistent 3D model of the geology with the final output being a 3D grid of properties (partly described by the existing article)
• Simulation - taking that input grid and trying to either predict the likely preformance of wells in the case of a prospect, or match the history of producing wells in an existing field when trying to optimise future drilling etc. If no good fit to the well production data is obtained then further iterations of the above are generally needed.
• Use of 4D (time lapse 3D) seismic methods - helps to monitor the field during production

Some software vendors refer to this as 'Seismic to simulation', particularly Schlumberger for their Petrel seismic interpretation and model builder as input to their ECLIPSE simulator, but that's no reason that we should. It's not a new process but the software now available allows it be done using one suite of software. Some people use the term specifically for iterative updating of models using the 4D seismic approach, in other cases it is the direct use of properties derived from the seismic data itself, 'seismic inversion', that is described.

The article as it stands appears to be mainly based on Fugro-Jason's approach, see here [1]. The references cited indicate that this is the case. I think that we need an article on 'reservoir modelling', which could include some of this, although less specifically tied to one software vendor's approach. Thoughts? Mikenorton (talk) 10:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure, a reservoir modeling article seems like a good idea. Do you think it should be its own article or a section of the reservoir engineering article? TastyCakes (talk) 21:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I lean towards a separate article. It involves a wider range of disciplines than just reservoir engineering. Mikenorton (talk) 00:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I've just noticed there is already a reservoir simulation article. Do you want to move the stuff from this article there? It doesn't seem like there are any objections to doing so... TastyCakes (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Some of this article could probably fit in reservoir simulation; it still doesn't remove the need for an article on 'reservoir modelling' IMO. Mikenorton (talk) 10:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

My feeling is that the term "Seismic to simulation" is not notable. As some of you have identified, this is one of many approachs, or workflows, leading to a simulation model. I don't much like the phrase as there is so much more than seismic data going into a simulation model. "Shared earth model" is another phrase relating to this area of activity, used to mean a single model which is shared between the earth scientists (geologists and geophysicists) and the reservoir engineers. The term "reservoir modelling" (or "... modeling") is in more common use but is ill defined, sometimes covering all the model building activity relating to a reservoir and sometimes used specifically to mean the flow simulation model. "Upscaling" is a term used fairly often to refer to the conversion of a finely gridded model, typically built by earth scientists, to a coarser model, typically to be used for (fluid flow) simulation. My vote is to create a small generalized article under the title "Reservoir modelling" (using some of the material here), with a link to the "Reservoir simulation" page. A small article on "Upscaling" might be worthwhile. Other more specialized pages could also be added without resorting to this software-vendor-specific approach. For example "Geostatistical modelling" at the earth scientists' end of things and "History matching" at the reservoir engineering end, are both terms in common use without any implication of a particular suite of software. Andy Beer (talk) 17:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I would opt for reusing some material of this page in the Geologic modeling, Reservoir modeling and Reservoir simulation sections; the terms "seimsic to simulation" has a marketing flavor. Gcaumon (talk) 12:41, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I've now created a short article on Reservoir modeling. The main aim there is to have an article covering the whole workflow from the earth science modeling through to simulation modeling, without falling into the trap of a specific methodology like this "seismic to simulation" article does. Reservoir modeling will need to be expanded, then we can scrap this article. The more specific geologic modeling and reservoir simulation articles should probably carry most material. Andy Beer (talk) 21:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a sensible way forward. I'll try to find some time to add to the new article. Mikenorton (talk) 17:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Areas of the present article in need of clarification/simplification

I see that some years ago, there was discussion of merging this article with reservoir modeling or another relevant topic. Given that the article still stands, I'll make my suggestions here.

My "take" as a user of this particular article is that of someone trying to gain a rudimentary understanding of different parts of the oil and gas industry, just enough to know what kinds of jobs involve what skills and titles. (Some people might be surprised how many of the users of these subjects' articles are in the recruiting/staffing industry!) By all means, a well-developed article could go into greater depth than a layperson would understand, but I would argue that the basic outline and the first few sentences of each top-level or second-level section should be reasonably comprehensible at least to a college-educated person, if not someone with even less experience; after all, secondary-school learners are another large potential audience for these scientific/technical articles. Two of the four sections seem to me to meet this criteria, while the other two do not:

• 2 Rock Physics and Petrophysics <-- first few sentences leave me feeling I have some sense of what happens at this stage
• 3 MCMC Geostatistical Inversion
• 4 Stratigraphic Grid Transfer
• 5 Model Validation and Ranking <-- first few sentences leave me feeling I have some sense of what happens at this stage (though it may help that I have graduate statistics classes in my background and understand predictive modeling in other fields such as education)

The two middle sections, unlike those I've marked, are just a little too abstract, a little too laden from the very beginning with terminology non-geology, non-petro people haven't heard anywhere and that isn't explained in our language. I'm not saying, "Dumb down the article," but I'd accept a characterization of my suggestion as "Dumb down the first few sentences of each section of the article." Lawikitejana (talk) 19:26, 19 March 2013 (UTC)