Objective
Oil exploration today is faced with an increased complexity due to relative limitations of the existing softwares used to process the seismic data in order to discover the oil traps currently searched for. These limitations can be reduced by suppressing strong hypotheses that are commonly used (common depth point) and introducing, at the processing stage, geological information.
The objective of the GEOSCOPE project is then to develop a new software which will integrate the latest evolutions in seismic processing based on more general hypotheses (tomography, prestack depth migration, inversion, section balancing) in conjunction with an interpretive approach of problems. All this will be based on recent improvements of the computer technology (computing power, graphic capabilities and large mass storage accessible volumes), which are to be taken into account to make the project feasible.
- Interactive environments for seismic processing have been reviewed and the software from the Standford University called "SEPLIO" is well suited. On another hand, hardware resources (disk IIO, network speed,...) are not at satisfactory level for 3D (three dimentsion) prestack data handling.
- A Reflection Tomography tool in 3D, in case of complex geology can be implemented according to the results of the project.
- Prototypes of prestack 3D depth migration has shown poor results, therefore needing more research and computer power.
- The 3D modele GOCAD promoted by the GOCAD consortium run by Pr. Mallet at the ENS of Geology in Nancy (France) seems well suited to the geophysicists. Reservoir engineers and geologists are still considering other products.
- The dialogue of the GEOSCOPE product will be carried out using X-Windows for the Window Management, C++ for the graphic user interfaces. This provides to the product a independance from the hardware which makes it highly portable.
- A Quality Assurance Plan has been partially designed to prepare a maintenance at the lowest possible cost.
- The GEOSCOPE data base interface has been designed according to the most promising topic, the reflection tomography, as well as the exploration data base interface, for which specific functions have been designed.
The project is divided into 3 phases.
PHASE 1 : consists in the analysis of the whole project from different point of view. The different geophysical products which shall be developed have to be specified on bases that integrate new features and can be accessed by all participants to the project. The tools that shall be used by the different companies to develop the software have to be standardized to reduce the costs at the development level and also at the maintenance level. Moreover, an important constraint will be to make the software portable in many possible environments, at least the one used by the different participants to the project. With the same objectives, common tools have to be specified to store and access the data as well as to develop the graphic interfaces. From the objectives, an estimation of the necessary resources shall be done and finally a planning shall be designed. If at the end of this phase, the project was found to be non feasible or too expensive orhad to be stopped for other reasons, the other phases shall not be undertaken.
PHASE 2 corresponds to the development of the two dimensional aspects of the project. The different modules that would be selected by the different participants (prestack depth migration, tomography, reflectivity or impedance estimation, section balancing and possibly some others) would be worked out at the research stage first and then developed. In this phase, even if the products are conceived in 2D, the model should be designed in 3D and managed in 3D. An access to the data in 2D should be made available for the applications of the second phase but the organization of the data in 3D should be made accessible to the end user.
PHASE 3 would be the extension of these research works to the three dimensional case. This should be done with the same techniques as the one that have been developed in the second phase, wwith possibly some extensions specific to the 3D case at least to manaage the data, visualize it and input interpretated data from it (we may have at this stage 4D data, for we intend to work with prestack data in most of the previous techniques).
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
DEM - Demonstration contractsCoordinator
92500 Rueil Malmaison
France