Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine

Emerson announces completion of Total Uncertainty Management program in cooperation with Statoil (photo: Statoil)

Emerson has announced the completion of its Total Uncertainty Management program in cooperation with one of the oil and gas industry’s leading Exploration & Production (E&P) operators, Statoil.

On 17th October 2012 Emerson announced they were teaming up with Statoil, in a Total Uncertainty Management program. The program focused on how E&P companies can improve history matching, uncertainty management and quantification across the entire reservoir characterisation workflow through Roxar Tempest ENABLE, Emerson’s industry-leading history matching and uncertainty estimation software solution.

Emerson has delivered major updates to Tempest ENABLE following deep technical input from Statoil and Emerson and Statoil have successfully completed the Total Uncertainty Management program. An incremental delivery approach was taken. In Q3 2014 the concept of Ensembles was introduced giving a marked improvement in statistical accuracy compared with traditional P10, P50, P90 approaches. In Q2 2016 the Roxar Application Connector was introduced allowing complex chained workflows, and in Q4 2016 the Ensemble Smoother was implemented. With the recent commercial 8.0 release of Roxar Tempest the benefits of the program are available to the industry as a whole.

The program’s enhancements to Tempest ENABLE, combined with the uncertainty management capabilities of Emerson’s Roxar RMS™ characterisation and reservoir modeling software, allows workflows based on commercial software applications to quantify uncertainties across the complete reservoir characterisation and development workflow. By analysing multiple plausible realisations and incorporating the data into their decision-making, E&P companies can better quantify the effects of uncertainties on volumes and cumulative production so they can improve risk management.

Key elements of the Total Uncertainty Management program, which took place over four years, included:

• Further improvements to the ‘proxy’ based history matching technique behind Tempest ENABLE, based on research and field trials by Statoil. Proxy based history matching and uncertainty has been shown to be a very effective means of using historical data to reduce the uncertainty of production forecasts.
• The implementation of Statoil’s innovative algorithms in Ensemble Smoother type history matching and uncertainty. The Ensemble Smoother is a powerful history matching technique, particularly successful in handling the production effects seen on 4D seismic.
• A continued focus on integrated workflows between geological modeling, simulation, the forward modeling of seismic and history matching – a workflow common to both proxy based and Ensemble Smoother type methods.
• Maximising the use of cluster and cloud computing within history matching and uncertainty management – essential for high volume and integrated workflows.

“Whether it be as input to field development and operational plans, investment proposals, or a future divestment, the ability to accurately generate future production estimates, quantify uncertainty, and minimise financial risk is one of the industry’s greatest challenges,” says Kjetil Fagervik, VP Product Development and Marketing of Roxar Software Solutions, Emerson Automation Solutions.

“We have been delighted to work with such an engaged client as Statoil on such an important project and also delighted that they have selected Tempest ENABLE and our integrated reservoir modeling workflow as the best means of achieving the goal of greater uncertainty management – so crucial for maximising production and recovery from each individual reservoir.”

Operators use Tempest ENABLE worldwide for better understanding and measurement of uncertainty in reservoir production performance estimates and for accelerated history matching. Tempest ENABLE can be used at any stage of a field’s life, from bid appraisal to abandonment, and whether production data is available or not.

Roxar Tempest, which runs on Windows and Linux and operates alongside Emerson’s characterisation and reservoir modeling solution, Roxar RMS, is an integrated software suite that provides a single, consistent interface and is used in hundreds of installations worldwide. As well as Tempest ENABLE,

Tempest MORE and Tempest VIEW, other modules are Tempest PVTx, a fluid analysis tool, and Tempest VENTURE, an economic evaluation tool that provides cash flow analysis derived from simulation results. All modules can be deployed as an integrated suite with a common interface, or separately within 3rd party simulation workflows.

Tags: Emerson, Statoil