Blind well test workflow for structure uncertainty study

Oct. 2013

Structure uncertainty can be originated from multiple factors such as wrong seismic event picks,
velocity model used for depth conversion, well tops quality, gridding algorithm parameters, and
many others. The uncertainty can be described in amount of error or residual between derived
depth (converted from time surface via a velocity model) and actual depth from well tops. And
the error or residual has characteristic of Gaussian distribution, therefor a surface normally can
be formulated as a stochastic surface in following equation:

From the equation we can see that the first standard deviation value (STD as follow) is the
key to compute output surface.

Petrel Structure uncertainty is handled in Make Horizon process or make zone process. See
following dialog of Make Horizons.
The value 15 meter (project unit) is the first STD value we have to provide. How to and where
to get this value for input?

The common practice is to use Make velocity model process to produce residual depth value
for each well top selected for a velocity model at each well location. And then read the STD
value from Statistic tab under the Settings dialog of the residual attributes. See following image.

The STD value here is the averaged of all wells for a filtered well top, when the filter icon is
clicked.

“Get one well out of” or “Blind well test” method is normally used when uncertainty study
conducated. If we have N wells for study, we select N-1 wells randomly each time and run N
times to complete the study.

Take Velocity modeling process for example, if we have ten wells in the process, we select nine
wells each time to run the modeling and consecutively run ten times. Each run we could get an
averaged STD value of each well top for nine selected wells. And then we average the ten STD
value. This would give us more scientific and accurate readout value for inputting to a structure
uncertainty study.

The workflow of this document fulfills this task. Here is the procedure:

1. Generate circle polygon around each wells and split the polygon into individual polygon.
See the following dialog of Make/edit polygons. The output is Wells polygons in Input
pane. Place cursor and right mouse button click to split it. Rename the polygons to well
names if you can (optional).
2. Create a Saved search with one well polygon. See following image. Make sure the Invert
total filter option is ticked.

3. Create a velocity model with Apply filter checked and select the Saved search defined in
previous step, in this example Outside_of_a_polygon. Also check the option Add
residual on well tops.
4. Compose the workflow below in Workflow editor. Please note line 17 is to define a
Reference list which contains well tops; line 27 is how to update a Saved search in
workflow; Line 31 is Make Velocity model process which can be accessed to make sure
it’s correctly setup; and line 39 Well tops calculator can be opened to type the
expression, and line 40 is to get STD value for one loop. It loops through all wells
polygons in the folder Wells polygons in line 26.

The project is attached with this InTouch ticket so the workflow is available for you.

5. Before running the workflow, A 3D window need to be opened. The output report, after
running, will give the average value of Standard deviation for total number of N-1 wells.
The values will be the input in Make horizon process. The report is in Summary data tab.
Please see the following report page.