ResBase

Weatherford Laboratories has until today provided about 80% of the core analysis data from the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). These data are currently not easily accessible to either the companies that originally ordered the data, nor new partners or new licensees at the NCS. There is a continuous farm-in/farm-out of licenses amongst the oil companies and a change of operatorship on more and more fields as they enter the tail-end phase. Due to the continuous high oil price, oil companies are under pressure to mature numerous prospects and small discoveries concurrently. This requires easier and faster access to core and fluid property data during the different phases of exploration and field development. It also requires data for new prospects from where you only have seismic data and no exploration wells. ResBase will be able to provide early data to new prospects by means of interpolation among data from mature regions.

Access to information extracted from ResBase will be available through familiar applications like Petrel and IRAP RMS. The data will be geo-referenced and be accessible through map interfaces such ESRI or Google Earth.

ResBase will, besides being a powerful tool for the oil industry in it self, open up unlimited possibilities for R&D projects. One example is to study regional statistics, trends and patterns for large basins. A number of new models could be the results of such studies. Another example is to perform large scale statistics on cross-correlation between geological models and core/fluid property data. Based on such models one can also extrapolate data into frontier areas and reduce exploration cost and risk. With present rig rates, this can be substantial cost savings.

Weatherford Petroleum Consultants intends to develop ResBase for the Norwegian market to start with. After developing the tool and having demonstrated its features and benefits on some key areas on the NCS, we intend to extend ResBase to include data from the remainder of the NCS. The third phase will be to offer this tool to operators in other basins in the world and support this service through Weatherford’s international network of laboratories and offices.