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COVER STORY

By RMS Shiv

| | JULY 201610

Arshad Matin, President & CEO

Paradigm:Digitally Transforming

Exploration and Production

n the sedimentary Permian Basin of North America, an integrated natural gas company, Williams, was facing difficulties in verifying precise wellbore placement related to the

target zone in the Barnett Shale. Improper reconciliation of drilling and geophysical data, led to an uncertainty about lateral location in the reservoir target zone. This adversely affected their ability to advise completion engineers about the geologic hazards. For the organization, the impetus now lay in drilling faster and in a smarter fashion; their goal was to cut drilling time to less than three weeks per well and optimize expenses. An integrated real-time workflow supported the fast creation of log-scale geosteering models ahead of drilling, facilitated interactive updates to

these models while drilling, and enabled re-planning of wells using updated models to deliver consistent wellbore placement.

Gone are the ‘dark ages’ of Oil drilling industry, where oilmen aimed their drills and hoped for the best. Today, hulking satellite antennas and an array of smaller dishes link

offshore platforms and spinning drill-bits with engineers and geologist to provide fast updates from LWD, rapid adjustments to the structural model, and allow for proper and consistent well placement. Welcome to the novel era of Old Oil: Digital Oil Field. “Progressive suppliers can break the cycle of ‘unbalanced global energy supply and demand’ by investing in an ‘Innovation Ecosystem’ during the down times. This approach if applied methodically and with discipline can lead adapters to emerge from a constrained economy,” outlines Arshad Matin, President and CEO, Paradigm.

The goal is not to drill more

wells – the goal is to drill wells

more efficiently and profitably. With Paradigm, our customers optimize their entire process and ultimately

derive more value from their total investment

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With software-enabled solution for Williams and many other organizations operating in the oil and gas industry, Paradigm caters to the unique needs of its global clientele with respect to easy-to-use technology and workflows which provide customers with deeper insight into the subsurface. By combining leading-edge science, high-performance desktop and cluster computing, and scalable data management, the organization delivers highly accurate results and productivity without compromise.

Un-conflicted and Software-focusedThe organization’s sole focus is on software innovations that advance exploration and subsurface characterization. Paradigm doesn’t sell exploration, drilling or well completions; they’re completely un-conflicted and solely invest in the creation of integrated software solutions based on industry workflows. The organization’s solutions provide a rapid return on investment, lower exploration and development costs, and therefore lower prices for energy consumers. “The goal is not to drill more wells – the goal is to drill wells more efficiently and profitably. With Paradigm, our customers optimize their entire process and ultimately derive more value from their total investment,” says Matin. Paradigm solutions share a unified 3D visualization canvas and network-based data management enabling confidence in decision making in the digital oil field arena. The organization’s digital oil field solution fulfills the requirement of detailed engineering design and accurate well placement to produce hydrocarbons safely and economically. Integrated with Paradigm’s advanced subsurface solutions such as Formation Evaluation, Reservoir Geophysics, Reservoir Modeling, Geologic Interpretation,

and Interpretation Validation, their solution endows vendor-neutral and real-time geosteering which optimizes well placement and increase field production.

For instance, the organization’s Paradigm platform is designed to help users maintain and improve profitability through enhancing efficiency while lowering risk and cost. Matin informs: “Paradigm Platform enables customers to re-rank and re-qualify known prospects, refine older assessments, and recover, process and visualize all available data from seismic for better imaging and property distribution.” With this platform, the organization has introduced on-the-fly seismic interpretation to accelerate prospect identification and development. The feature also enable clients in positioning their reservoir in depth with higher accuracy to reliably plan wells, and advance from seismic to simulation in hours or days.

Paradigm’s digital oil field software suite features Epos integrated capabilities, creating an HD platform with bi-directional connectors to all leading Geological & Geophysical platforms and tools. The organization has empowered their users to take advantage of the innovation from others through their expanded Software Development Kits (SDKs), as well as the new Paradigm App Exchange. This stimulates sharing of best practices and workflow improvements among their Geolog and SKUA-GOCAD users, which delivers a comprehensive seismic-to-simulation workflow. The organization’s fully integrated seismic data interpretation, visualization, and modeling software suite is engineered to deliver more information from existing data and more confidence in decision making today and in the future. With outstanding usability, interactivity and scalability, Paradigm solutions enable interpreters to fast track the time

required to construe and model complex structures, and realize the benefit of precise and geologically consistent results.

Addressing digital oil field’s big data challengeThe technology offered by Paradigm help companies reduce their annual outlay on disk storage and networking, and improve access speed to large 3-D seismic datasets is in the bit-depth of data used by consumers. Data loaders and administrators don’t have to decide in advance on the typical expected use of a seismic volume through its life cycle and determine whether to save it as 8 bit, 16 bit or 32 bit, or in more than one format. The clientele is provided with high-performance links that allow data to be transferred from third-party repositories into their databases for access by Paradigm applications.

With the help of the organization’s digital oil field technology, full precision seismic data can be stored in less space than an 8-bit volume with minimal loss of fidelity. This also enables organizations to perform attribute extractions and calculations with the highest precision possible. “Efficient reading of seismic data into software applications is achieved through optimal use of the graphical and CPU capabilities. Combined with the reduction in data volumes being transmitted across a network, this typically results in significant improvements in data access speeds,” adds Matin.

The “3 P’s for Sustainability”Paradigm is opting to invest in their Platform by continually upgrading towards open interoperability that drives collaborative and accelerated innovation. Partnerships are forged to develop and commercialize new industry capabilities and delivery options. And the quality of their People is focused upon, both within Paradigm and through their extended network, to hone people’s technical expertise and grow their service footprint. “For the past several years, we have sought to break down the barriers of proprietary systems and data inoperability by developing platform focused on blending innovation from wherever it arises,” mentions Matin. What completes this sustainability fetter are Partnership and People. Alliances are expected to become a growing part of the fabric of Paradigm’s ability to deliver high science to all users.

It has been a brisk year for Partnerships at Paradigm. In January, they announced a partnership to deliver Reservoir

Driven Production Optimization (RDPO) as part of GE's digital suite for oil and gas. RDPO is a first-of-its-kind upstream solution for optimizing field level production by integrating Paradigm's subsurface knowledge with GE's production intelligence. The organization also penned a similar agreement with Dassault Systemes to deliver Reservoir Driven Production Risk Management (RD PRM), a combined software and services offering that integrates advanced rock, fluid and stress characterization to help users better understand how the reservoir changes with time.

Vision for future: Eyes on ‘paradigm’ changeMany oil and gas producers today face unprecedented difficulties in securing finance, dealing with depressed prices, and assimilating technological advancements. BRexit termed as a black swan event is now a prominent part of the issues and is making it burgeon even further. Oil prices are on the rise again and this could prove to be a killer blow for some players. There will be space for smart operators and Old Oil hasn’t done much with Digital Oil.

Paradigm’s fully integrated seismic data interpretation, visualization, and modeling software suite is engineered to deliver more information from existing data and more confidence in decision making today and in the future. With outstanding usability, interactivity and scalability, Paradigm solutions enable interpreters to fast track the time required to construe and model complex structures, and realize the benefit of precise and geologically consistent results. “One change in managing personnel that will expedite the transition to the digital oil field is to emulate the younger generation by embracing advanced collaborative networking tools. Essentially, the technology to deliver the digital oil field is already at hand—the challenges that remain are in integrating the technologies with workflow processes,” concludes Matin. EC

Paradigm Platform enables customers

to re-rank and re-qualify known

prospects, refine older

assessments, and recover, process and visualize all available data

from seismic for better imaging and property distribution

Arshad Matin, President & CEO