Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, November/December 2014 | Page 21

Images Videos 2D/3D/4D Seismic Downhole Camera monitoring fluid flow Microseismic Well Logs, Mud Logs, Offset Logs Time-based image sequences of acoustic and EM fracture monitoring Sounds Numbers Completion Procedures Distributed Acousting Sensing (DAS) - fiber optic sensors Texts Completion Results Core Analysis Production Data Past and Present Notes from Drilling Engineering Artificial Lift Data Figure 1: Examples of shale data sets. that are already at work in the oil patch. Leading the charge is prescriptive analytics, which can “prescribe” optimum recipes for drilling, completing and producing wells to maximize an asset’s value at every point during its operational lifetime. The premise of prescriptive analytics is to take in all data – Figure 1 shows examples of shale data sets – and use the data to predict and prescribe how to make better wells using information from the past wells and subsurface characteristics of undrilled acreage. While today’s sophisticated operators and energy services companies are adept at analyzing each of these data a na l y t i c s sets separately, prescriptive analytics technology is unique in that it processes these structured and unstructured data sets together, and does so continually. Since reservoir conditions are anything but static, the machine learns from new streams of data and updates its “prescriptions” when the data sets signal the need for a recalibration. This adaptive environment compresses learning curves, enabling better decisions faster, with less risk – and much less capital. Questions worth answering Let’s “begin with the end in mind” – as the late Dr. Steven Covey used to say n o v e m b e r / d e c e m b e r 2 014 | 21