Juniper Programme Update

PSTIís Juniper Programme on managing reservoir uncertainty continues to make good progress. The primary aim of the programme is to address uncertainty as it impinges upon the way reservoir management decisions are made, and how appropriate actions are identified, planned and executed.

As part of the Juniper Programme a workshop was held during April in Bristol on Handling Reservoir Uncertainty. A total of 50 industry representatives from 21 PSTI Member companies, together with programme consultants and researchers, attended the two-day meeting. The primary aim of the event was to report progress to date.

The workshop presented the approach developed at Bristol and Aberdeen Universities of describing reservoir appraisal and development as hierarchical processes. The main focus was how uncertainty propagates through the hierarchy. Uncertainty has three distinct components: fuzziness, incompleteness and randomness. These components need to be handled by distinct techniques. The workshop demonstrated how interval probability theory can be used to manage incompleteness and randomness, and how fuzziness is managed through the positioning of the concept or sub-process within the process hierarchy.

Determination of top structure and oil water contact were the problems addressed to illustrate the management of uncertainty. The problems were sufficiently complex to show how uncertainty propagates, and how interval probability theory can handle incompleteness (an open world approach) as well as problems of dependency.

The workshop also included presentations from industry representatives on uncertainty management, particularly the use of geostatistics. In addition, current issues relating to uncertainty theory in the USA together with the future of uncertainty computer modelling were addressed.

In the final session, the future direction of the Juniper Programme and related joint industry projects was considered. It was agreed that the methodologies developed should be applied to real, high level decision making examples where there is a genuine choice to be made. Subsequent to the workshop, the Steering Committee approved focusing future work on a 'live' example provided by one of PSTIís member companies. An extended reach well into an untested structure from an existing platform is planned and the uncertainty associated with the decisions made will be studied.

For further information contact Alistair Fletcher, e-mail: [email protected] Tel: 0117 928 9117. Fax: 0117 927 7203.