Immersive Experience: VR Revolutionizing Oil Workflows
Authors: Pallanich Jennifer 
Published: January 2025

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The oil industry has long flirted with virtual reality (VR) and visualization tech but falling prices and technological advances mean this once-futuristic concept is becoming more practical.

The tech is appealing because oil companies have struggled to visualize complex subsurface data and effectively train their workforce. VR’s immersive nature is helping companies overcome such challenges.

Space for Cores

Physical space has long been a constraint when it comes to analyzing core samples at the YPF Technology (Y-TEC) research facility in Berisso, Buenos Aires.

Ariel Guzzetti, lab and data manager for the subsurface services department at YPF Technology, told JPT the lab can display up to 500 linear m of physical core at any given time. Core projects tend to take between 4 and 8 months to complete because during those projects specialists require frequent access to the cores. Sometimes the facility displays optical electronic microscope images, CT scans, log plots, charts, and other data related to the cores on laptops, monitors, or printouts near the cores, such as for workshops or training sessions.

“That’s how we run out of space,” he said.

The facility can handle somewhere between five and eight projects simultaneously. “We usually have three, five, seven projects on hold, and not due to the capacity of our lab. Maybe we can do more tests, but we run out of space to lay out the cores,” he said.

Finally, Guzzetti said, people frequently travel to the Buenos Aires facility to work with the cores, which can be inconvenient or costly.

But virtual space is a different story: Enter the “miniverse,” a small virtual universe, in this case dedicated to geoscience.

With VR, it’s possible to “bring people to the rock instantaneously,” he said, and displaying relevant data is much easier. “With this technology, you can mix up the rock and the data together without the restriction of laptops or TV screens. You can display as much information as you want, all in the same area.”

With VR, experts can access and examine the cores, consult existing core data, and interact with other experts to study the samples.

Core images, scans, and other information can be used to recreate the core digitally so it can be studied and interacted with in a virtual environment.

Currently a geologist can see the structure, fractures, and facies in the core. Guzzetti emphasized that the virtual core is not the same as a digital twin of the core.

“For core description, it does not replace the actual core. It’s more for analyzing data and seeing bigger structures,” he said. But he believes a digital twin future will be here soon, with virtual cores providing higher-resolution details.

For now, though, Y-TEC is testing VR technology and plans to deploy its use within the +VacaMuerta consortium.

“We are going to give a VR headset to every consortium member,” he said. “We can even coordinate to do meetings in the virtual reality so they will not need to come to our lab to see the rocks.”

Working in the miniverse requires the use of a VR headset, and Guzzetti has been testing the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 2 versions.