More new tools for Sherlock
By Rhonda Duey, Exploration Editor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As prospects get harder to find, technology developers try new techniques.
A lot of press releases find their way into my inbox on a regular basis. Most of these end up in the News and Analysis section of this magazine. But recently I’ve received three missives that I thought ought to be examined in more detail.
All of them have two things in common — they describe an unusual technology, and they promise to revolutionize oil and gas exploration. You, Gentle Reader, might wish to withhold judgment on that promise. But it’s always fun to investigate different ideas.
Pattern recognition
Pattern recognition software is not exactly a new concept in exploration, but a company called Productive Geoscience claims to have taught its technology to directly recognize hydrocarbons. Called N2Vision, the technology will be used to evaluate the petroleum and natural gas potential of selected offshore Lake Erie sands.
The core of the technology is a multilayer feed-forward neural network (MFFN) algorithm for pattern recognition. The algorithm is trained to recognized hydrocarbons by automatically establishing non-linear relationships between all attributes of the seismic field and data from existing wells. Since 1986, hundreds of exploration wells, mostly wildcats, drilled on locations evaluated with N2Vision technology have established a predictive success ratio greater than 85%, the press release claims. It lists Lukoil, Yukos, Surgutneftegas and Tatneft as past clients.
The present goal is to evaluate undeveloped acreage adjacent to a Talisman-operated horizontal well that has produced more than 120,000 bbl of oil since 2001. Tyche Energy Inc., a small independent, owns a 50% working interest in the land.
Tyche President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Rowe said, “This is an excellent opportunity for a junior such as ourselves to utilize ‘leading edge’ technology normally only available to the majors.” The Russian majors, that is.
I know I've posted this at least half a dozen times in 2006,but it's good dd for the newbies
futrcash
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
