Special Sessions on Petrotechnical Visualization A Point of (3D) View on Visualization
Authors: Thomson James A. , Poupon Manuel N. 
Published: October 2008

Session Abstract

The AAPG-sponsored Special Session: Petrotechnical Visualization consists of back-to-back morning and afternoon sections with seven presentations per section. Each author will offer a dynamic, interactive presentation such as a live fly-through of marine datasets. The common themes throughout the Special Session are:Integration of multiple data types for greater understanding of offshore technical challenges,Positive impact of visualization techniques on business performance. Authors from large and small operating companies, academia and industry contractors will present topics covering upstream geoscience and engineering interest areas from pre-exploration seabed surveys through drilling, reservoir visualization, infield facilities layout and export pipeline planning and installation. Geographically, the talks will feature case studies from several basins (West Africa, Columbus-Trinidad, Lake Maracaibo-Venezuela and Gulf of Mexico, where 3D visualization techniques have played a key role in successful E & P projects.

The morning section highlights presentations concerning geohazards and seafloor visualization, plus other petrotechnical areas. Specific topics include visualization of multibeam sonar data[1], reducing risk from seafloor hazards[2,4], integration of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) datasets, assessment of shallow drilling hazards and visualization used in analysis of a deepwater pipelay with incidental discovery of a historical ship wreck.

Following the morning presentations focused on drilling/geohazards and pipeline routing, the second session on "Petrotechnical Visualization" will illustrate how 3D visualization tools have been allied to state-of-the-art technologies (e.g. Neural-Network seismic classification and tomography-based pore pressure prediction.

Overall, the presentations will cover the complete range of the E&P cycle from new play development, mature field exploitation[9,13], pore pressure prediction, well planning to subsea installation and offer a panorama of the strengths (and limitations) of 3D visualization techniques via fully interactive "live" presentations.

This session will be completed by an update on one of the latest development in hardware/software configuration, providing an insight into the "Hollowing out" concept and future 3D visualization environments.

A point of (3D) view on Visualization

3D visualization has gradually been introduced into E&P workflows since the late 80s. At first, there was a bit of reluctance from the E&P community to take up the new technology, in part due to a change in interpretation habits (pioneers were sometimes seen as "video-game" interpreters). An additional reason that 3D visualization was slow to catch on was the severe performance limitations of the early hardware/software platforms. At that time, interactivity could only be obtained with compromises in display resolution and/or dataset size.

It was only in the late 1990s that the continuous advances in hardware/3D visualization technologies resulted in a proliferation of visualization centers (Figure 1). First implemented within major oil companies, these "Viz centers" became the de-facto collaborative 3D environments to integrate multidisciplinary results and promote exchange of ideas between geoscientists (Figure 2).

Along with this one of the negative effects of the development of interpretation workstations started to affect interpretation workflows: Interpreters were spending more and more time in front their monitor" and less and less time directly interact