Summary
GEMINI (Geo-Engineering Modeling through Internet Informatics) is a proposed interactive, integrated Website designed to construct real-time geo-engineering reservoir models. Information assembled from the Website or uploaded by the client (one person or a team) will be analyzed with an extensive suite of web-accessed analytical software using intelligent interfaces and tutorial support to accomplish project development. Projects can range from regional to local and span problems from complex to simple.
Reservoir characterization will encompass parameter definition, petrophysical modeling, and geo-engineering model development. Specific components in petrophysical modeling incorporate a pay assistant with capillary pressure and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis modules, relative permeability modeling, hydrocarbon pay synthesis, and synthetic seismogram construction. Geomodel development will comprise reservoir zonation, automated correlation of flow units and gridding and mapping; geo-engineering modeling encompasses volumetrics and material balance and parameterization for reservoir simulation. Utilities will permit import and export of results.
A tutorial component will assist the client in understanding theory and application of analytical software and in the operation of GEMINI. Participating companies will provide data and expertise to test the software and provide feedback, including participation in an annual review meeting.
Economic Rationale
Access to public domain data and analytical tools may be the only practical method to conduct needed geologic and engineering studies in mature oil and gas producing provinces. The clients of GEMINI would be mainly independents or consultants. Independents now account for a majority of domestic oil and gas production. Management decisions beyond proven, conservative remedial operations may not be accomplished because of severe divergence between data and analytical requirements, training, and company resources. Moreover, resources of smaller companies are inadequate to develop this computing and data enterprise as proposed by GEMINI. Extending the infrastructure to workers in remote locations, and providing Internet tools to render new information, analyses, and solutions to reservoir characterizations and modeling should help ensure competitiveness and perhaps, a revolution, of sorts, for the domestic petroleum industry and the local economies that depend on them.
GEMINI should help incubate entrepreneurial teams to optimize their time and funds to access, negotiate, and interpret the considerable electronic information that exists today and will become available in the future. Access to quantitative data reduces assumptions and decrease risks and uncertainty in predictions and management decisions.
The computing enterprise of GEMINI and derivatives of it developed at other public domain sites could be adopted by several thousand small oil and gas operators and consultants. A similar number of mature oil and gas fields that are in jeopardy of being abandoned could be better managed and production sustained or even increased. The impact to several thousand local, usually rural communities in proximity to these fields would be rewarded by this sustained economic activity. Maintaining the infrastructure and extending the life of these domestic fields will offer continued access to employ new technologies that will continue to be developed as petroleum demand continues through the 21st Century. Oil and gas product value is nearly $2 billion in Kansas alone. A five percent gain in production would amount to a $100 million increase in revenue to the state. Smaller, but significant gains could be realized in the other 18 petroleum producing states, if the technology of GEMINI were adapted.