In recent years, low prices and declining production have increased the likelihood that oil fields will be prematurely abandoned, locking away large volumes of unrecovered oil. The major companies have sold many of their fields to smaller operators in an attempt to concentrate their efforts on fewer "core" properties and on overseas exploration. As a result, small companies with fewer resources at their disposal are becoming responsible for an ever-increasing share of U.S. production.

The goal of the MTU-DPI project was to make small independent producers who are inheriting old fields from the majors aware that high technology computer software is now available at relatively low cost. Most major oil companies rely on expensive computer workstations. In this project, a suite of relatively inexpensive, PC-based software packages, including a commercial database, a multimedia presentation manager, several well-log analysis programs, a mapping and cross-section program, and 2-D and 3-D visualization programs, were tested and evaluated on Pioneer Anticline in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California. Relatively inexpensive, commercially available PC-based programs can be assembled into a compatible package for a fraction of the cost of a workstation program with similar capabilities. During this workshop, the various programs that project members used will be compared and evaluated and new applications developed at MTU and DPI will be discussed (Table 1).

A field trial of the technology was performed on the Monterey and Etchegoin Formations in Pioneer Field (Fig. 1). Pioneer Field is a typical small, older field that contains wells with old logs, a few wells with modern logs, and limited sidewall core coverage. It is essential to be able to extract the most information from the old logs and to accurately assess their reliability. Phases of the field trial included: data gathering; calibration of core, cuttings and liquids to well-log suites; and input of geological, petrophysical and reservoir engineering data to the various software packages. Conventional and sidewall- core data from Pioneer and nearby Cymric fields were used to develop algorithms to correlate log response with geological and engineering measurements in order to extract a maximum amount of information from old wells that only possess old electric logs. Our final output includes: computed logs of lithology, porosity, and clay content for all project wells, including those which possess only old electric logs; 2-D and 3-D representations of the reservoir and structure; and an extensive database which contains logs, maps, cross- sections, and core data and analytical data for Pioneer Field and surrounding areas assembled in a Multimedia Database Management System designed and constructed by project staff in a commercially available multimedia software package.

In this workshop, we intend to demonstrate how to use existing, proven technologies to go into an old field, assemble relevant existing data into an organized database, calibrate log data using standard and special analytical techniques, process that data into a computer image of the field, and map the reservoir and structure using relatively inexpensive PC-based computer software.