Abstract
Saudi Aramco made significant progress in the last few years in setting up immersive visualization laboratories for displaying three-dimensional data on its reservoirs, wells and their trajectories. While the 3-D reservoir models using a combination of seismic, geological, well testing and log data make the displays very impressive, the essential building blocks represented by the core data are mostly absent in these visualization efforts. Core descriptions and core photographs, although have been collected for a very long time were not easy to integrate due to their analog nature. Recently progress has been made in collecting core data in digital format through core imaging, digitizing, 360-degree core photography and CT-scanning. CT has been used in Saudi Aramco for more than 10 years to generate non-destructive images of reservoir cores. However, lack of proper three-dimensional image processing software limited its use to two-dimensional image slices only. Saudi Aramco R&D Center recently undertook a project which involved testing the performance of several three dimensional image processing packages in displaying data generated by a CT-scanner. The results were very promising. Some of the software not only displayed the static data on cores but were also able to capture the dynamic sequences from laboratory waterflooding and acidizing experiments. The 3-D visualization added a new dimension to these tests as they allowed the users to evaluate and compare the performances of various treatments before they are actually implemented in the field.
