14–16 May 2019 The Wigwam Resort, Phoenix, Arizona
To maximize return on investment, unconventional resource developers must ensure that their wells are targeting the right intervals and are appropriately completed and stimulated. This affects both short-term productivity and long-term economic recovery. Tighter economic margins and more-cautious capital investors are driving development away from standardized designs—so-called “factory mode”—and back to a more science-based approach.
Conventional science is being pushed to extract the maximum amount of useful information from a minimum number of expensive samples or from more readily available material such as drill cuttings and surface samples. Emerging applications of data science have the potential to break down silos between disciplines. Geoscientists and engineers are poised to harness artificial intelligence, freeing them up to focus on higher value-added tasks.
Image-based techniques and high-performance computing are allowing scientists to conduct large numbers of virtual experiments, calibrated to just a few, time-consuming laboratory tests. And, technological advances from other disciplines, such as rapid DNA sequencing, are being applied to produce new and potentially useful information.
In many cases, the industry is learning a whole new language. What is the data telling us, and what does it allow us to control? How do we capture and institutionalize the knowledge of our experienced staff so that new employees face a shorter cycle of learning?
In this workshop, experts from all disciplines will discuss how science is being applied to optimize the development of unconventional resources—and what challenges remain to be solved.