TABLE OF CONTENTS Computers are essential tools for reservoir characterization. Most organizations provide adequate computing environments for their staff, from secretaries to geoscientists and engineers. However, some individuals and very small companies still prefer to hang cross sections on walls with a piece of string as a datum, or to interpret paper copies of seismic lines and well logs.
Progressively more geoscientists and engineers who are entering the petroleum industry grew up in a world in which, as toddlers, they had an early exposure to toy computers that helped them learn to visualize images on a screen. In grade school, they will have used computers in their classrooms and school libraries, and many of their families will have home computers. By the time they reach college and the work world, they are computer-literate and very comfortable in the computing environment.
Computers are ubiquitous in the upstream and downstream operations of the oil and gas industry. They are used to collect and manipulate seismic data for generating images, to generate well logs, to make maps, to evaluate numerical variables, to develop mathematical formulations, and to simulate fluid flow in a numerical reservoir model, to name a few applications. "Data mining" is a relatively new discipline that is a direct result of the ability of computers to search for data in efficient, rapid ways not previously possible or practical.
Improving computing speed is a constant challenge for hardware developers, because geoscientists always want to see the results of their...
