Geophysical Visualization: Industry Trends, Ingredients To Consider, And Future Expectations In Building A Visualization Environment

Geophysical visualization is becoming an important and even required portion of a company s arsenal of tools for finding and risking oil and gas accumulations. Its value and usage without a doubt will increase in the next 10 years. Many companies now have at least one visualization center; a few have many. For example, bp built its first visualization center in early 1999. They now have 15 working centers worldwide, with 3 more either being built or planned. Rumor has it two other companies are playing follow the leader and plan on building 10+ centers in the next two years. The goal of building and using a visualization center is to quickly and accurately gain insight on data without missing something important, and then being able to easily convey to others what you have learned. The ability to do this will depend upon your particular visualization center and the software you have running in it. Your ability to utilize these centers better than your competitors will depend upon: 1) your initial center design and implementation, 2) your plan for future modifications to the center and 3) how well and how quickly you adjust to the changes that will come. Below I provide what I think are some industry trends concerning geophysical visualization and major ingredients that need to be considered when building such a center. I conclude with predictions of where we will be in 2011. Today it is hard to get a well drilled without interpreting a 3D data volume. I think the technology will have advanced such that in 2011 it will be hard to get a well drilled without a local collaborative visualization session of the drill location. My presentation will also include a brief glimpse of software features I expect future visualization centers to utilize.