Application
Traditionally, visualization technology was primarily used in exploration departments. Over the last years visualization has spread to the entire sub-surface environment. The technology is today applied in combination with different software in a host of disciplines, from prospect generation, via well planning to exploration in order to maximise the recovery rates from oil fields in production.
Cyviz is also a provider of technologies used in remote operation centres for e-fields. These centres are perhaps one of the fastest growing trends in the oil & gas industry today. Cyviz has technologies which are adopted into such centres both for 3D visualization purposes for collaborative visualization, and in collaboration rooms with large 2D displays with multiple inputs.
Value creation in oil and gas
Applied by Oil & Gas sector professionals for a number of years, investments in visualization technologies has seen very high rates of ROI. In fact, the majority of the several hundred solutions implemented in the industry over the last years have paid for themselves in a matter of days of operation.
Several of Cyviz’ clients in the Oil & Gas industry report that their decision time when determining new well paths has been reduced from up to five weeks to merely five days after state-of-the-art visualization technologies were introduced. Moreover, the same companies indicate that the technology has also significantly improved oil and gas recovery rates from the same wells.
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Case example
“The new system is so popular in our team that we periodically have to use extended working hours to find available time on the solution”
Earth Scientist Dr. Richard Olstad,
ChevronTexaco Norway
Challenge:
Among the first clients to acquire a Cyviz vizwall was ChevronTexaco Norway in 2003. Faced with challenging and time-consuming tasks related to the interpretation of seismic data, geophysicist saw great potential in introducing tools for 3D geometrical modelling. ChevronTexaco already had an old CRT-based solution, but this was not used. Regular desktop solutions traditionally used in the process of delimiting prospective areas for further analysis are restricted in terms of screen-size and resolution. This limits the possibility of showing the entire picture with adjoining regions, making initial screening even more time-consuming. Moreover, the desk-top approach to analysis rules out the obvious advantages of a collaborative work-process.
Solution:
In order to overcome the challenges related to handling their large datasets, ChevronTexaco decided to introduce a technologically updated and user-friendly visualization tool. Evaluating several new alternative options, based on LCD, DLP and CRT-technology, the DLP-approach was initially ruled out for cost-reasons, as the price for such a solution was expected to be in the region of US$ 400.000. Cyviz was able to offer a solution at a fraction of this cost, and ChevronTexaco implemented the vizwall at their Oslo, Norway office in March 2003.
Outcome:
The new system was found to be extremely effective for ChevronTexaco’s purposes, allowing collaborating teams to display large, detail-rich 3D images of relevant areas with other regional features in the same picture. Quickly being able to view cubes from all possible angles – in a detailed regional view – has significantly reduced the time required for analysing possible prospects. ChevronTexaco also learned that collaborative work sessions are very much easier to organise and administrate with the new solution in place. Although the benefits of the system have not yet been quantified, improvements in interpretation quality and time saved are easy to spot, says ChevronTexaco.
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