Visual display of reservoir parameters affecting enhanced oil recovery. Final report, September 29, 1993--September 28, 1996

The Pioneer Anticline, 25 miles southwest of Bakersfield, California, which has yielded oil since 1926, was the subject of a three-year study aimed at recovering more oil. A team from Michigan Technological University of Houghton, Michigan (MTU), and Digital Petrophysics, Inc. of Bakersfield, California (DPI), undertook the study as part of the Department of Energy`s Advanced Extraction and Process Technology Program. The program provides support for projects which cross-cut geoscience and engineering research in order to develop innovative technologies for increasing the recovery of some of the estimated 340 billion barrels of in-place oil remaining in U.S. reservoirs. In recent years, low prices and declining production have increased the likelihood that oil fields will be prematurely abandoned, locking away large volumes of unrecovered oil. The major companies have sold many of their fields to smaller operators in an attempt to concentrate their efforts on fewer {open_quotes}core{close_quotes} properties and on overseas exploration. As a result, small companies with fewer resources at their disposal are becoming responsible for an ever-increasing share of U.S. production. The goal of the MTU-DPI project was to make small independent producers who are inheriting old fields from the majors aware that high technology computer software is now available at relatively low cost. In this project, a suite of relatively inexpensive, PC-based software packages, including a commercial database, a multimedia presentation manager, several well-log analysis program, a mapping and cross-section program, and 2-D and 3-D visualization programs, were tested and evaluated on Pioneer Anticline in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California. These relatively inexpensive, commercially available PC-based programs can be assembled into a compatible package for a fraction of the cost of a workstation program with similar capabilities