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Cloud computing offers significant benefits, including enhanced real-time data analysis, increased efficiencies, and cost savings realized from multiple servers or data infrastructure. Technical personnel also benefit, as they can utilize remote access to data storage or acquisition to resolve operational issues faster than ever.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence
Machine learning( ML) and artificial intelligence( AI) change how oil companies recognize bypassed pay opportunities, which extends field life considerably. These tools are utilized to reassess a field built in the 1950s and provide data to construct a new reservoir model.
For example, advanced AI software enables building a new, robust threedimensional image of a reservoir. Today, a new static model can be completed from beginning to end within a month, whereas ten years ago, it might have taken 18 months to build a single new model. With this improved model, it is possible to leverage existing data to identify previously bypassed pay opportunities.
Modern software platforms
Modern software platforms use programming and algorithms to read, learn, and model enormous datasets to create oil and gas reservoirs in alignment with an established body of knowledge, including depositional setting, reservoir characterization, and formation evaluation. Advanced AI software platforms can access ML code via plug-ins and use built-in algorithms to reprocess or reimage sand bodies, reservoir architecture, and fluid dynamics to produce a more accurate understanding of the reservoir. This enables the calculation of remaining oil volumes or bypassed pay opportunities.
Remote operations, monitoring, and control
Drone infrastructure can be advantageous in specific and limited situations, such as when oil and gas reservoirs are located beneath rugged or inaccessible terrains, including mountain ranges, valleys, swamps, or ravines. Previously, geoscience professionals were required to conduct fieldwork at locations of reservoir outcrops, wherever they existed. Now, modern drones with advanced camera capabilities record accurate measurements. This approach eliminates the need to deploy a crew to physically map the aerial or surface extent or land boundaries and reduces the time and cost required to map an oil field.
Recent innovations and emerging technologies
In addition to relying on technologies such as AI and ML, employing horizontal wells can improve oil extraction. This directional drilling technique digs at an angle of at least 80 degrees and enables access to oil that might not otherwise be attainable due to the reservoir’ s unique shape or less-than-ideal accessibility.
Today, horizontal wells are more prevalent, as they help lower costs and improve oil extraction efficiency. They offer additional advantages over traditional vertical drilling. For instance, a horizontal well provides access to subsurface reservoirs that may not be accessible from directly above ground and allows one drilling pad to investigate a larger underground area.
Extended reach drilling( ERD) has similar benefits. Describing ERD as“ essentially an advanced form of directional drilling or horizontal drilling technology,” researchers noted in a 2023 study that the technology“ has the ability to achieve horizontal well departures and total vertical depth-tohorizontal distance ratios well beyond conventional directional drilling.” The authors
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