The Northern Mid-continent has large oil and gas resources in numerous reservoirs. A higher percentage of original oil in place may be produced if sufficient information about the reservoirs is made available to operators. A consortium of state geological surveys, academic institutions, and independent petroleum producers and consultants is creating a prototype Petroleum Atlas to meet this information need. The atlas is unique in that it will provide to the U.S. Department of Energy and independent operators digital and hard copy information, digital data bases, new cutting-edge scientific studies of typical fields in major petroleum plays of the region, updated information into the TORIS data base, and purposeful technology transfer. The atlas evaluates and provides to the U.S. DOE and independent operators the technologies best suited for additional petroleum recovery from northern mid-continent petroleum plays.
Current products include on-line accessible digital data bases covering major petroleum plays in Kansas. Regional data bases are supplemented with geological field studies of selected fields in each play. Digital imagery, digital mapping, relational data queries, and geographical information systems are integral to the field studies and regional data sets. Data sets will eventually have relational links to provide opportunity for history matching, feasibility, and risk-analysis tests on contemplated exploration and development projects. The flexible "web-like" design of the atlas permits the operator to access comprehensive reservoir data and customize the interpretive products (e.g. maps and cross sections) to their needs. The Kansas Digital Petroleum Atlas will be accessible in digital form on-line and through CD-ROM using a World-Wide-Web browser as the graphical user interface.
Regional data sets and field studies will be free-standing entities that will be made available on-line through the Internet to users as they are completed. Technology transfer activities will commence in the early part of this project, providing data information sets to operators prior to the full digital atlas compilation
The atlas will provide a basis for future development of engineering simulations of typical fields within plays and of artificial intelligence software to screen technologies for additional petroleum recovery against reservoir parameters submitted by operators.
Introduction, Purpose, and Scope
To help mitigate the decline in U.S. oil production, the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) has initiated programs designed to prevent premature abandonment of the national petroleum resource. These programs enable and encourage development of innovative technologies, and promote the transfer and application of technologies to petroleum operators of all sizes, but especially independent operators. Independent operators now dominate the domestic petroleum industry. Through these methods, the USDOE intends that significant additional production that otherwise would be lost forever will be recovered from known reservoirs.
One of the most effective methods to gain additional production from known reserves and prevent the premature abandonment of wells is to provide independent producers with the keys to successful reservoir characterization and production practices for their type of reservoir. These keys include geological characterization and engineering methods that are useful for gaining additional recovery from specific reservoir types. For example, a key for one type of reservoir might be sophisticated, inexpensive ways to identify unswept compartments; and for another field type the key might be optional and optimal techniques for additional workover, completion, and production practices that have been successful in analog fields.
Short of conducting a full-scale reservoir analysis of each producing field, an efficient and effective method of communicating this type of key information to operators is by example. For each reservoir type in a producing region, a thoroughly studied and documented analog can illustrate which geologic and engineering procedures are likely to be most successful in increasing ultimate recovery. An analog example provides operators with sufficient information and procedures to study their own producing fields, and increase production and ultimate recovery by copying and applying proven methods. One way to accomplish the goal of disseminating information by analog is to provide a geological and engineering based, state-of-the-art, petroleum atlas that contains not only historical data and descriptions, but technologically advanced syntheses and analyses of "why reservoirs produce" and "how ultimate production maybe increased."