ISATIS - Geovariances

ISATIS
WHERE TO SEE US ?
AAPG – Salt Lake City (USA) – May 11-14, 2003 (Booth 2341)
CSPG – Calgary (CANADA) – June 2-5, 2003 (Booth Tba)
EAGE – Stavanger (NORWAY) – June 2-5, 2003 (Booth 217)
EAGE – Tunis (TUNISIA) – October 6-9, 2003 (Booth Tba)
AMGE – Cancun (MEXICO) – November 9-12, 2003 (Booth Tba)
T H E U N I V E R S E O F G E O S T A T I S T I C S
Geovariances Newsletter N°17 – April 2003 – Oil & Gas
ISATIS VERSION 4.1
RECENT STUDIES
Isatis V4.1 was released a few months ago.
It will satisfy a frequently expressed customer request regarding the
possibility of choosing where to store Isatis files when creating an Isatis
project. In addition, graphic Metafiles and Color Scales are now part of
the Study and can therefore be saved together with the Isatis database
itself.
The management of Journal Files has also been improved with more
advanced features, including a Batch Editor and its Macro-language.
This offers a high degree of flexibility in the preparation and execution of
more sophisticated workflows.
As an example, in Time to Depth Conversion, the assessment of the
uncertainty due to the error in the seismic picking becomes a much
easier task to achieve. You can use simulations to generate several
Time Interpretations and store these inside a Macro-variable. It is then
easy to compute alternate series of Depth Simulations – e.g. using Time
as an External Drift – within a loop on the various Time Interpretations.
In the case of complex geological contexts, poor quality seismic
images are often the rule. In such an environment, the picking of
stacking velocities is very challenging and subject to large
uncertainties. Geovariances recently carried out a project for
ENTERPRISE OIL in this context, including the analysis of seismic
processing velocities from a geostatistical point of view and the
application of appropriate filtering techniques in 3D (factorial kriging,
procedure for detecting erroneous data). Then, well velocity
information was integrated in order to obtain velocity maps of the
overburden up to the top horizon of the main reservoir.
This study is representative of Geovariances’ oil & gas industry
consulting activity which has been focused on time to depth
conversion issues. It confirmed that a definite advantage of our
techniques and the tools we promote (Isatis/Isatoil) consists in their
ability to assign to a conceptual model a measurement of its
uncertainty.
GOCAD INTERFACE
GOCAD & ISATIS users will definitely welcome the latest version of the ISATIS GOCAD plug-in which is available in GOCAD V2.0.
This free plug-in now lets the user, with a few clicks, directly exchange datasets & grids between the two applications without any intermediate file.
Thanks to the Client-Server organization of the plug-in - based on our GTX-Server access toolkit - an ISATIS user can access any of his ISATIS projects
on the network, directly from the File -> Import Objects -> Isatis menu in GOCAD. Conversely, it is just as easy to store GOCAD objects in an ISATIS
project, thanks to the File -> Export Objects -> Isatis menu.
Most GOCAD objects are handled by this plug-in: Voxets and Sgrids (transposed into ISATIS 3D Grids), 2D Grids, Curves (ISATIS Lines), and
PointSets (ISATIS Points). Below is an example of 3D Grid & Lines that are loaded into GOCAD as Voxet & Curves.
Moreover, the latest version of the plug-in now allows exporting simultaneously an SGrid and associated Data towards ISATIS, so that advanced Kriging
and Simulation methods can be applied on properties directly inside a Paleo-environment stratigraphic grid. The results can then be recovered in
GOCAD, to display the properties in their current structural position.
Conditional Simulation of a Kimberlite pipe,
Courtesy of De Beers, Mineral Resource
Management Department 8
It has never been so easy to combine the power of 3D Modeling and Visualization of GOCAD
with the power of Geostatistical Modeling offered in ISATIS!

ISATIS
NEWS
Newsletter N°17 – Oil & Gas
GEOVARIANCES AMERICAS, HOUSTON
TRAINING AGENDA
Message from the President:
Since opening the Geovariances Americas office in Houston last June, we
have focused on the best ways to reach and service our North American
clients. Our initial efforts emphasized the existing activities, transferring
most of the sales initiative from France to Houston. For this, we have to
extend a hearty “thank you” to Brigitte Hogan. I think it is safe to say that
our own Viviana Alderete, sales and marketing associate, is now
comfortably in the driver’s seat.
Speaking of marketing and sales, we have now “tested the waters” as
exhibitors in both the AAPG/APPEX meeting last year in Houston (August
27 – 29) and the SPE (September 29 to October 2) in San Antonio. Both of
these meetings were important first steps for Geovariances Americas.
Another step was offering technical support to our North American clients.
We are happy to welcome Cecilia Suarez to our team. She is a petroleum
engineer who has worked for PDVSA in Venezuela and is now working on
her master’s degree at Houston University. She is with us four days per
week, and having first cut-her-teeth on ISATIS in my class, she is fast
becoming a significant user. Most importantly, with the help of our
Fontainebleau support team, primarily Fred Rambert, she is becoming an
excellent support professional. Thanks Fred! Feel free to email Cecilia
csuarez@geovariances.com, or call her at (713-782-8366). The support
lines are open in Houston!
April, May and June will be key months for us at GVA. We are launching a
series of breakfast meetings for our clients that are designed to
demonstrate various important features in ISATIS and the variety of
services and support we are offering out of the Houston office. The first
meeting will be on April 25 th where we will provide a short presentation of
the key features of ISATIS and an overview of the software. Following the
breakfast, we will offer a free, hands-on demonstration.
In May, we will be attending the AAPG Annual meeting in Salt Lake City,
Utah from the 11 th to the 14 th . May 16 th , for the second breakfast, we will
be hosting some of the professional staff from the École des Mines de
Paris (France): Hélène Beucher, Jacques Rivoirard, and Isabelle Cojan,
from Centre de Géostatistique and Laboratoire de Sédimentologie
(Fontainebleau). Their presentation will demonstrate advanced
developments on reservoir characterization, including pluri-gaussian,
Boolean, and process-based stochastic simulations. For both the April and
May breakfasts, attendance is absolutely free, but space is limited, so be
sure to register early. For information, please contact Viviana at
valderete@geovariances.com.
At the end of May, we will be giving a geostatistics course in Calgary as
part of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists’ annual meeting.
(The course will take place from May 28-30). Check out the CSPG annual
meeting website at www.cspgconvention.org. Viviana and I will be
attending the convention the week following the course. Come see us at
the Isatis booth (to be announced).
Finally, Richard, Viviana, Cecilia, and I want to thank our users in North
America for helping us get the North American office off to a great start!
We look forward to seeing many of you over the year, and providing you
with the best customer service possible. We welcome your comments and
suggestions.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey M. Yarus, Ph.D.
President, Geovariances, Americas
Courses Description, Bookings: www.geovariances.com
More info: training@geovariances.com
Assessing Volumetric Uncertainties:
The Geostatistical Approach
October, 20-22, 2003
Keywords: Conditional Simulations, Spill Point
Geostatistical gridding for the Oil & Gas industry
September, 8-10, 2003
Keywords: Variography, Kriging, Wells and Seismic Integration
Time to depth Conversion: The Geostatistical Approach
November, 5-7, 2003
Keywords: Collocated Cokriging, External Drift,
Velocity Cube Calibration
Available upon request:
Introduction to Geostatistics for Oil & Gas (5 days)
Keywords: Variograms, Kriging, Multivariate Geostatistics,
Simulations, Faults
Oil & Gas, Isatis essentials (3 days)
Keywords: Getting started with Isatis: Data Loading,
Exploratory Data Analysis, Kriging and Simulations
NEW COMPUTER PLATFORMS FOR ISATIS 4.1
The latest release 4.1 of Isatis is now available for:
SUN / Solaris 7 (or above)
IBM / AIX 4.3.3 (or above)
SGI / IRIX 6.2 (or above)
PC Intel/AMD / Windows NT4.0, 2000 or XP
PC Intel/AMD / Linux RedHat 7.3 (or above)
The versions of Operating Systems mentioned here correspond to the
computers on which Isatis is being developed or ported. Isatis is
therefore certified for these versions. However the application also runs
on more recent system upgrades.
ADAPTECH HAVE JOINED GEOVARIANCES
Adaptech in Saudi Arabia have joined the Geovariances office as an
Isatis reseller.
Please send future information requests to :
ADVANCED APPLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY EST. (ADAPTECH)
PO Box 64 - 31411 Dammam – Saudi Arabia
Tel : +966.3.8091111 - : +966.3.8092266
Mr Adel S.ALHARBI – Managing Director
Email : adel@albinali1.com
We welcome Mr Adel S.ALHARBI to the Geovariances team
France, Avon - Phone : +33 1 60 74 90 90 - Fax : +33 1 64 22 87 28 - info@geovariances.com
USA, Houston - Phone : +1 713 789 9331 - Fax: +1 713 789 9318 - info@geovariances-americas.com
Visit us at: www.geovariances.com