Productivity Gains Through Workflow Management
Future productivity gains for integrated reservoir characterisation projects must be achieved by simpleto- use technical workflow management software (see Figure 2). However, interdisciplinary technical workflow management is a non-trivial problem. (8) This technology must be implemented using cross-platform technology designed to capture and integrate the workflow choices involving multiple programs, data versions, algorithm choices and parameter choices. This supervisory level software must help document how and why choices were made when the shared earth model was created. The result will be trusted reservoir management earth models that can be updated confidently as part of a reservoir management life-cycle process. These reservoir characterisation workflows can take advantage of distributed and constantly changing team technical resources in order to manage field assets throughout the field life-cycle. Shared earth models used for business-unit decisions result from hundreds of complex choices. Multidisciplinary teams make these choices as new data becomes available or as old data is reprocessed. Anaudit trail is required to allow team members to update the model and ensure that the business-unit team can understand easily how the new data affects reservoir predictions. This will facilitate decision points where additional costs for characterisation complexity and model updates are evaluated for cost-effectiveness.
Figure 2: Technical Collaborative Databases
will Provide a Technical Audit Trail of All Project Data
For example, how was the data created,
what assumptions were included in using the
data, at what multiple workflow stages of the
project was the data used and what user communication
was recorded about the data quality and its impact on model
results that are used by the business units.
Future technical workflow management systems must support a common technical project interface. The systems must be fully compatible with all technical data types and must interface with current technical software from any vendor and legacy databases. A workflow management system should include three functional levels: the top level is technical project management; the mid-level is collaborative technical workflow management; and the base level is the collaborative data workspace. (9) The technical workflow manager requires such critical features as QC utilities that allow review of data and results at various stages of project completion without requiring all team members to access the costly, complex and proprietary software that was used during the characterisation study. The combination of a user-documented collaborative database with a technical workflow manager allows the older concept of a one-time technical project to be cost-effectively updated as needed. The result is a dynamically maintained reservoir model that is available on demand to make business unit decisions by use of the most up-to-date interpretations.
The collaborative data workspace must be more than just the conventional database software that technical programs use for shared access to logs, seismic, maps, 3- D models and engineering data. A collaborative data workspace should provide team members with the ability to store and find all relevant interdisciplinary data, and it should include user-defined links to all project historical and current documents used in the technical workflow. The collaborative data workspace must include information about how the data is used in the model, what assumptions or constraints are used for each modelling choice involving this data and communication notes from model users about data quality. Methods for accessing proprietary, legacy databases are an important aspect of this technology.
Technical workflow management includes such features as QC tools that allow review of input data and results at various stages of a project by all team members. Technical workflow management software must use an audit trail to cost-effectively refine the workflow to take advantage of new technical choices and provide early identification of bottlenecks on the workflow critical path. The audit trail is a critical function required to reproduce results reliably given the same data, assumptions and model parameters. Other important aspects include assigning messages to files, discussion threads and search functions for quickly locating important information.
Technical project management constitutes an integral part of software used for oil and gas field life-cycle management. Project management software can use current and historical data from the technical workflow manager to help address decision-point issues on the basis of the value of additional information and the probability of a measurable project result within the available time. Technical project management provides the link that allows integration of technical project status and results into business management systems. This technical-to-business information flow allows technical work results to be available in time to effectively impact business unit planning.
Conclusion
Technical workflow management software will provide multidisciplinary, cross-platform technical collaboration to improve reservoir characterisation and reservoir engineering workflows. Benefits of technical workflow management include better QC of dataintegration tasks, project results and an audit trail of data and algorithms used to create a verifiable highquality shared earth model. The Web-based combination of technical workflow management software and a collaborative database will allow distributed team members to create, manage, collaborate, audit and archive technical studies. Technical workflow management will provide the next level of productivity gains for integrated reservoir studies and shared earth models. The result will be a dynamically maintained reservoir model that is available on demand to make business unit decisions. Technical workflow management will provide the technical team and asset manager with easy-to-use Web-based tools for integrated viewing of project progress and usable results from any location in the world.
Category:
Reservoir Engineering
| 
Download PDF
References
