TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Petroleum Data Analytics

Luigi Saputelli, SPE, Senior Reservoir Engineering Adviser, ADNOC, and Frontender

While many other industries have expe-
rienced tremendous benefits over the
last few decades, adoption of data-driven
analytics is still young in the oil and
gas sectors. Benefits captured across
industries involve improving the qual-
ity of decisions, improving planning and
forecasting, lowering costs, and driving
operational-efficiency improvements.
However, many challenges for full adop-
tion exist in our industry. In addition
to the outdated data-management chal-
lenges, key gaps exist in the under-
standing of basic principles concern-
ing how and when to use different
data-analytics tools.
Data-analytics benefits are being
demonstrated through the efficient
exploitation of data sources to derive
insights and support making decisions.
An exponential increase in the num-
ber of applications in recent years has
been observed for enhancing data qual-
ity during/after acquisition by automati-
cally removing noise and outliers; bet-
ter assimilating new and high-frequency
data into physics-based models; opti-
mizing calendar-based inspections for
preventive-maintenance tasks; increas-
ing equipment availability of well, sur-
face, and drilling systems; optimiz-
ing reservoir recovery on the basis of
injector-to-producer allocation factors;
and many others.
Machine learning is a collection of
techniques, both supervised and unsu-
pervised, that gives computers the ability
to learn and adapt without being explicit-
ly programmed. This ability to learn pro-
vides capabilities for describing past and
current operating conditions, predict-
ing, and prescribing.
Supervised learning includes regres-
sion and classification methods in which
a relationship is established between
the input and a known output. Unsuper-
vised learning includes clustering, which
addresses problems with no prior knowl-
edge on the output, automatically group-
ing a large number of data variables into
a smaller variable set.
Most data-driven projects may follow
a similar approach during implementa-
tion. In the majority of these, large efforts
are made in collecting and preparing the
data, which typically reside in scatter
sources and exist in unstructured for-
mats. Once data are placed in proper tab-
ular forms and relationships are estab-
lished, then data are ready for analysis,
which may include exploratory visual-
izations, model order or dimensionality
reduction, clustering, regression, classi-
fication, pattern recognition, cross vali-
dation, model validation, prediction, and
optimization. Insights and syntheses are
derived along the analysis process.
Text mining and natural language pro-
cessing (NLP) allows the possibility of
efficiently extracting valuable informa-
tion from text documents and reports.
These methods enable an unexploited yet
powerful source of insights about oper-
ational transactions (e.g., recommen-
dations, success/failure) that are cap-
tured in unstructured text. In the drilling
area, NLP has been used successfully
to describe and predict nonproductive-
time and invisible-lost-time causes from
a massive amount of unstructured data
collected from the drilling-operation
reports. Major contributions will also
occur in reservoir management and pro-
duction optimization. JPT

Luigi Saputelli, SPE, is a senior reservoir engineering adviser with

ADNOC. During the past 25 years, he has held positions as reser- Recommended additional reading
voir engineer, drilling engineer, and production engineer. Saputelli at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
previously worked for 3 years with Hess Corporation, for 5 years SPE 181015 Natural Language Processing
with Halliburton, and for 11 years with Petróleos de Venezuela. He Techniques on Oil and Gas Drilling Data
is a founding member of the SPE Petroleum Data-Driven Analytics by M. Antoniak, Maana, et al.
Technical Section and the recipient of the 2015 SPE International OTC 27577 Assessment of Data-
Production and Operations Award. Saputelli has authored or Driven Machine-Learning Techniques for
coauthored more than 70 technical publications in the areas of digital oil field, reser- Machinery Prognostics of Offshore Assets
voir management, reservoir engineering, real-time optimization, and production by Ping Lu, American Bureau of Shipping,
operations. He holds a BS degree in electronic engineering from Simon Bolívar et al.
University, an MS degree in petroleum engineering from Imperial College London, and SPE 181037 Big Data Analytics for
a PhD degree in chemical engineering from the University of Houston. Saputelli serves Prognostic Foresight by Moritz von Plate,
on the JPT Editorial Committee, the SPE Production and Operations Advisory Cassantec
Committee, and the Reservoir Description and Dynamics Digital Oil Field subcommit-
SPE 185695 A Novel Adaptive Nonlinear-
tee. He has served as a reviewer for SPE Journal and SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Regression Method To Predict Shale Oil
Engineering and as an associate editor for SPE Economics & Management. Saputelli Well Performance on the Basis of Well
also serves as managing partner at Frontender, a petroleum-engineering-services firm Completions and Fracturing Data
based in Houston. He can be reached at lsaputelli@frontender.com. by Amol Bakshi, Chevron, et al.

JPT • OCTOBER 2017 87