ABSTRACT
Data-bases have become a topical subject in the oil industry. In the absence of any previous experience in this domain by oil field personnel, the tendency is either, to try and invent the wheel, or to borrow ideas from other industries with database experience. Either of these courses could be very expensive and could lead to a cul-de-sac.
The ADNOC Data-base in Abu Dhabi is probably the most advanced petrophysical multi-well database (MWDB) in the oil business. After five years of dedicated data-base work by a team of specialists, with all the data of approximately 2200 wells that represents over 7 million feet of open hole loaded, a wealth of experience and expertize was developed to write professionally on the subject of data-base applications in the oil industry.
This paper presents a case study of a data-base application for a large field. The paper discusses the organization and input of all types of well and field data, data quality control, normalization of all the data for field consistency and homogeneity, and the field and multi-well concept of data interpretation and estimation of missing data. The paper discusses in detail the applications of the data-base for reservoir simulation and for Stratigraphie and structural studies of the various formations and layers in a field. The emphasis here is that a data-base is not just an instrument of data storage and retrieval, but is an effective way to manage the reservoir.
One of the main conclusions made was that an effective data-base can be used to efficiently utilize human resources so that an engineer can spend 10% of his time sorting and searching for data and the remaining 90% doing effective analysis. In the absence of an effective data-base, the tendency is reversed; 90% sorting and searching and 10% of analytical work.
